The film takes place in rural Tennessee, where communities have experienced economic and environmental devastation created by the coal mining industry.

The introduction of the Highlander Folk School in 1931 by educator Myles Horton and the movement to bring labor union representation to the region are shown as means of empowering the population.

[1] People of the Cumberland was part of a series of motion pictures created by Frontier Films, a collective of documentary filmmakers who focused on subjects relating to political and economic hardship.

[3] The film used actors to recreate the April 30, 1933, murder of Barney Graham, president of the local United Mine Workers.

[4] Other events depicted in the film, including square dancing at the Highlander Folk School and a Fourth of July rally at La Follette, Tennessee, used the actual residents of the Cumberland region.