"Night, Death, Mississippi"

     This poem initially caught my eye because the title is has "Mississippi" in it, and that's where I'm from, so I was curious to read and analyze it.  After reading through a few times, it became clear that Mississippi is just a broad setting for the poem.  I think it's used to set up a general understanding of the times and events that have occurred there.  Mississippi and the south are notorious for terrible race crimes, which is what the poem is about.
     More specifically the setting is at night, which also has a lot of symbolism and imagery for the themes of the poem.  Night and darkness are usually used to symbolize evil, and to me, the last line in the poem really solidified this: "O night betrayed by darkness not its own."  It suggests that the usual evil or darkness of night is surpassed by the evil of the men committing hate crimes.  The speaker is also obviously an evil person which, to me, is more powerful than a story being told from the perspective of a victim.  
     Besides the dark/night imagery, there is also some light imagery.  While the speaker is thinking about what he's kind of "missing out on," there's a line, "white robes like moonlight," and it sort of suggests that the speaker supports and thinks that those actions are right and good.  In part II of the poem, there's an italicized line, "O Jesus burning on the lily cross," which points to the goodness and savior of the victim. 
     As far as place and setting go, I think that Robert Hayden uses imagery of light and dark (and night) through place to capture the broader picture: that Mississippi is and was a place where a lot of hateful crimes took place.