 Blues historian Samuel Charters sees the song as having elements of protest and social commentary . The second verse includes " the sun goin ' down now boy , dark gon ' catch me here " , a reference to the " sundown laws " or curfew during racial segregation in the United States . Signs in the rural South advised " Nigger , don 't let the sun set on you here " . Johnson may be expressing a real fear of trumped up vagrancy charges or even lynchings that still took place . Others suggest that the song is about a deeper and more personal loneliness . Writers Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch argue that the fifth verse in the single version captures the essence of the song : " left alone , abandoned , or mistreated , he stands at the crossroad , looking this way or that for his woman " . 
