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Gwendolyn BrooksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The backdrop for this poem is highly specific, and it is impossible to accurately interpret or analyze “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” without possessing a basic understanding of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as the nuances of southern culture, Jim Crow laws, post-Reconstruction era southern politics—and, most significant to this poem—the murder of Emmett Till. (For a thorough explanation of Emmett Till’s murder, as well as the socio-political ramifications, see the “Chapter 1 | The Murder of Emmett Till” video clip from the PBS documentary in the Further Reading section of this guide.)
In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till, a native of Chicago, visited family in Mississippi, which was, at the time, a heavily segregated area of the country, ruled and regulated by Jim Crow laws (See “Jim Crow Laws: Definition, Facts & Timeline in the Further Reading section of this guide for an explanation of Jim Crow laws.) After speaking to a married white woman, Till was attacked and murdered by two white men. The men involved were acquitted of Till’s murder after the fact.
Brooks’s poem “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is a response to Till’s murder, and the details of the case appear, poetic and figurative, in the poem.
By Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
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Boy Breaking Glass
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Cynthia in the Snow
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Maud Martha
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my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
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Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)
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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
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The birth in a narrow room
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The Blackstone Rangers
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The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
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The Crazy Woman
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The Lovers of the Poor
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The Mother
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the rites for Cousin Vit
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To Be in Love
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To The Diaspora
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Ulysses
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We Real Cool
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