SPEAKER
The poem is told in the present tense and in first person, and yet its subject and time period could be seen either as slave-owning America or early 20th-century ("Jim Crow era") America. The speaker in this poem could be thought of as a person from either of these times, and serves as a kind of "representative" of all black Americans during that historical era. It's almost as if a whole community is speaking this poem, instead of just one individual.
VIOLENCE AND OPPRESSION
so there's not much actual violence in "I, Too, Sing America." Actually, if you're going to look at things literally, there's no violence in the poem at all – no one gets hurt, nothing blows up, etc. But there's plenty of oppression, and if you look at the poem in its full cultural context (i.e., that of slavery), there's plenty of suggested violence within the text here. Most of the actions of the white Americans in this piece are blatantly oppressive, and those same actions are just bristling with a subtle, almost-there violence
SETTING
The setting in "I, Too, Sing America" is relatively clear in some ways, and pretty vague in others. For starters, we don't know exactly when this poem is supposed to take place –it could take place either during America's slave-holding days, or afterwards. In other words, we don't know for sure when the poem takes place, because racial segregation was part of American history long after slavery officially ended. (Want to know more? Check out our US History Learning Guide on Jim Crow in America.) And we don't know exactly where it's supposed to be either, aside from in the United States.
