Here's the official FX description: Season four of Fargo is set in 1950, at the end of two American migrations — that of Southern Europeans from countries like Italy, who came to the U.S. at the turn of the last century and settled in northern cities like New York and Chicago — and African-Americans who left the South in great numbers to escape Jim Crow and moved to those same cities — you saw a collision of outsiders, all fighting for a piece of the American dream. In Kansas City, Missouri, two criminal syndicates have struck an uneasy peace. One Italian, one African-American. Together they control an alternate economy — that of exploitation, graft and drugs. This too is the history of America. To cement their peace, the heads of both families have traded their eldest sons."