The primary theme encountered in Brooks’s “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is racially-motivated violence; specifically, Brooks poetically analyzes the role of white women and patriarchal culture in the deaths of Black people. The poem responds specifically to the murder of Emmett Till, but rather than focus on the grief of the community or Till’s perspective, Brooks decides to focus on the white woman involved. Brooks’s focus on and analysis of the perception of the white woman is unique, and the scope of the poem shifts slightly to encompass not only racism and violence but also the role of white femininity in the cycle of white-on-Black violence.

Brooks sets the poem specifically within what could be considered the “domestic” sphere of the home: the kitchen. The poem’s setting, coupled with the speaker’s attempts to relate the murder of Till to the fantastical setting of a “ballad,” speak to the role of women in society as one of diminished power, fear, and longing. The speaker in the poem longs to be the subject of a romantic ballad, but in reality, she is the excuse given to murder a young boy.