“A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is built upon Brooks’s allusion to the literary ballad form, and that allusion is central to the poem’s conceit. (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.) Brooks uses archetypal fantasy characters and literary allusions to romance and ballads in order to demonstrate the absurdity of the white speaker’s flawed worldview. “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is Brooks’s response to the brutal 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who spoke to a married white woman in Mississippi and subsequently lost his life at the hands of white men from the community. Brooks’s “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” explores racial violence and complicity it considers, through the eyes of a white woman, the interconnected issues of gender relations, sexuality, southern culture, violence, and racism.
