The setting of the poem is never explicitly identified. However, the reader can deduce that it takes place in a wealthy urban area which the low-income Black population is storming. That said, the poem most likely takes place in Chicago as Brooks wrote it in response to the riots in Chicago after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Hailing from Chicago, much of Brooks' poetry depicted the lives of urban Black poor in the city. Yet, eliding specific geographical markers from the poem broadens its scope to be a poem about white supremacy at large, and how African Americans respond to it. Indeed, the poem also makes references to Boston, for the Cabots were a wealthy Boston family descended from the explorer John Cabot.