Ballad of Birmingham

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'Ballad of Birmingham' was first issued as a broadside in 1965. This applies to a large paper sheet that only has text on one side of it. They also reported news or events or contained a ballad that had some form of social commentary in this case. As the epigraph says, this poem was written in reaction to the 1963 bombing of Birmingham, Alabama's 16th Street Baptist Church. Four Ku Klux Klan members were attacked by the black congregation. The attack killed four young girls and wounded twenty-two others.

Poetry

(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

“Mother dear, may I go downtown

Instead of out to play,

And march the streets of Birmingham

In a Freedom March today?”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For the dogs are fierce and wild,

And clubs and hoses, guns and jails

Aren’t good for a little child.”

“But, mother, I won’t be alone.

Other children will go with me,

And march the streets of Birmingham

To make our country free.”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,

For I fear those guns will fire.

But you may go to church instead

And sing in the children’s choir.”

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,

And bathed rose petal sweet,

And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,

And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know her child

Was in the sacred place,

But that smile was the last smile

To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,

Her eyes grew wet and wild.

She raced through the streets of Birmingham

Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,

Then lifted out a shoe.

“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,

But, baby, where are you?”

(Dudley Randall, 1968)

Summary

Using this events that lead up to this little unidentified girl falling prey to the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombers, the poet takes the reader, stanza by stanza. At the beginning of the poem, she asks her mother if she should go into the city and march on the Freedom March. Her mother tells her no, suggesting she go to the church and the choir of children instead. That's what she's doing, and what ends up leading to her horrible death.

Author

Born in Washington, DC, the son of a pastor and a teacher, at the age of four, Randall wrote his first poem, moved to Detroit when he was nine, and had his poems first published when he was 13 in the Detroit Free Press. Randall, a bright student, graduated early. He received a BA in English from Wayne University (now Wayne State University) and an MA in library science from the University of Michigan after working at Ford's River Rouge Foundry for five years and serving in the South Pacific during World War II. Randall, who became Wayne County's reference librarian, spoke Russian fluently, visited Europe, Africa, and Russia, and later translated several Russian poems into English.

Racism Issue

The key themes of this poem are mother's love, death and battling racism. A tension between a daughter who wants to be part of the march for democracy and a mother who wants to shield her child from the risks of protest is described in the poem. That is why she asks her daughter to spend time within the church's secure walls. Ironically, however, the safest place turned out to be a fateful region in which her daughter died sadly.

It is also important to understand the broader historical context, in addition to the history specifically surrounding the events in this poem. In the midst of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, this bombing, and the writing of this poem, happened. Martin Luther King Jr., along with many other courageous and heroic men and women, worked during this time to achieve equal protection under the law for all Americans of color. Many of the demonstrations and acts of violence were the focus of Alabama.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the Birmingham Movement alongside the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the same year that this assault occurred. The organizations urged children to engage in marches and demonstrations and to make it clear to every watch that it was generations of Black Americans who stood up for their rights. For his inhuman and abusive treatment of these demonstrators, the racist police chief, Bull Connor, is remembered today. He promoted police offers with their hands but also with fire hoses and dogs to attack protesters.

Reference

  1. Randall, Dudley. 1968. Ballad of Birmingham. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 1 2020.
  2. Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall. Retrieved January 1 2020.