Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall
"Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall is a poignant poem that reflects on the tragic bombing of the Seventeenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. This event resulted in the deaths of four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—while highlighting the violent realities faced by the Civil Rights movement. The poem captures a conversation between a mother and her daughter, where the daughter desires to participate in civil rights demonstrations, but the mother, fearing for her child's safety, insists she instead attend church. Randall utilizes rich imagery and irony to depict the mother's protective instincts and the tragic outcome of sending her daughter to what should have been a safe space.
The narrative unfolds through eight stanzas, revealing the preparations for church and culminating in the devastating explosion that shatters the mother's peace. The contrast between the mother's hopes for safety and the brutal reality of the bombing serves as a profound commentary on the era's racial violence. Ultimately, the poem encapsulates not only personal loss but also the broader implications of systemic racism, prompting readers to confront the historical and emotional weight of such tragedies. "Ballad of Birmingham" stands as a powerful reminder of the innocent lives affected by the struggle for civil rights.
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Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall
First published: 1965, as a broadside; collected in The Black Poets, 1971
Type of poem: Ballad
The Poem
September 15, 1963, was not a typical Sunday in Birmingham, Alabama; it was a day of devastation. Sunday school had just ended at the Seventeenth Street Baptist Church when nineteen sticks of dynamite, stashed under a stairwell, exploded. Twenty-two of the black congregation’s adults and children, although injured, survived the bombing. Four little girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, did not. The bombing was a horrific reminder of the dangers of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s as well as of the even greater danger and murderous power of unchecked racism. Americans were shocked as they watched televised accounts of the explosion. It was unfathomable that four little girls would be murdered in church.
Dudley Randall’s poem about the event, “Ballad of Birmingham,” was set to music and recorded prior to its 1965 publication as a broadside. The poem of thirty-two lines is divided into eight four-line stanzas; in each stanza, the second and fourth lines rhyme. In the first stanza, Randall begins a dialogue between a daughter and her mother and presents the child’s unusual request to forsake play in order to participate in one of the civil rights demonstrations that were prevalent in the South during the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the second stanza, the mother denies her daughter’s request because she fears for her daughter’s safety amid the clubs, police dogs, firehoses, and guns; she also worries that her child could be jailed. Hearing her mother’s fears, the daughter appears unafraid and determined to participate in the freedom demonstration. The child responds in stanza 3 that she will not be alone, because “Other children will go with me,/ and march the streets of Birmingham/ to make our country free.” In the fourth stanza, the mother, worrying about gunfire, continues to tell her young daughter no. The mother then gives her permission to go to church instead and “sing in the children’s choir,” and the dialogue between child and mother ends.
Randall writes the remainder of “Ballad of Birmingham” in the third person. In the fifth stanza, the girl’s preparations for church are described: combing and brushing her hair, bathing, and putting on white gloves and white shoes. In stanza 6 the mother, no longer fearful for her child’s safety, smiles because her daughter is in church, “the sacred place”; then, in stanza 7, she hears the explosion. Her peace of mind is abruptly shattered, and with eyes “wet and wild” she runs toward the church “calling for her child.” The mother arrives at the church, the site of the bombing, in the final stanza. Amid the “bits of glass and brick,” she finds a shoe. “Ballad of Birmingham” ends with the distraught mother’s extremely brief monologue: “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,/ but, baby, where are you?” The little girl does not respond. Never again can the daughter and mother engage in conversation. The child who eagerly wanted to raise her small voice in protest of social injustice has been silenced.
Forms and Devices
Typical of a ballad, Randall’s poem presents a brief narrative that includes a dramatic event—the bombing of the church and the loss of lives. Imagery is an important device in “Ballad of Birmingham.” Imagery is the use of a word or a group of words to elicit various sensory experiences. From the first to the last stanzas, readers of “Ballad of Birmingham” encounter multiple images that are primarily visual and associated with the dialogue, the girl’s preparation for church, and the explosion. Randall invites readers to visualize and hear a mother-daughter conversation in stanzas 1 through 4. Their dialogue evokes visual images of the many civil rights demonstrators marching through the streets of Birmingham and elsewhere. In stanza 2 are the dogs, clubs, firehoses, guns, and jails used to control the primarily black protesters; in stanza 3 are children marching the Birmingham streets; in stanza 4 are “guns [that] will fire.” The mother sends the child to church “to sing in the children’s choir,” and auditory images of young voices singing are called forth.
The next group of images is centered on the little girl’s preparations for church in stanza 5; readers see her combing and brushing “her nightdark hair,” bathing “rose petal sweet” (which also evokes a fragrant image), and putting “white gloves on her small brown hands” and “white shoes on her feet.” The last group of images focuses on the explosion in stanza 7. Readers visualize and hear the explosion, see the mother’s wet, wild eyes, see her frantically racing through the streets of Birmingham, and hear her calling for her daughter in vain. Then, in stanza 8, readers visualize the mother clawing through “bits of glass and brick” and ultimately lifting her daughter’s shoe from the bombing debris.
A second major device is irony. The central irony in the poem involves the fact that the mother, in trying to keep her daughter safe, wishes her to go to church rather than to a demonstration, and the girl is killed in church. Subsumed within this irony are lesser ironies: The daughter’s preparations for church become her preparations for death; knowing that her child is “safe” in church causes the mother to smile before the explosion occurs; a church is expected to be a sanctuary, not a place of death.