Analysis and Review of "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall

Do you enjoy history and a good read? Well, Dudley Randall brings the two together in his adaptation of an event in history. Born in 1914 and died in 2000, Randall was an African-American poet. His most notable work is The Ballad of Birmingham, originally published in 1965. The poem was written in response to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. “Ballad of Birmingham” concisely interprets a tragic event and manages to capture the malicious and painful moments of the civil rights movement in a short poem about a mother and daughter. After “considering the extent to which audience controls the form of the message”, I have determined that this poem was written for all audiences. It is a beautiful poem that can be read by all people and is written for all people. There isn’t any hateful or disrespectful language used, only painful and innocent language. The poem is written not to show how angry and hateful blacks should be towards white people but more so to ensure regret and sadness in those who read it. In “Ballad of Birmingham”, Dudley Randall makes us feel the pain felt the day of the accident and pulls us into that day and moment through his use of history, imagery, irony, and symbolism.

A young girl asks permission from her mother to march in the streets of Birmingham. The girl’s mother forbids her child to go because it can be dangerous. The girl tries to convince her mother again by saying there are other children who will come together with her. The mother still forbids her child to go, and ask her to just go to the church. The girl puts on white gloves and shoes and then leave the house, the mother lets out a relieve smile knowing that her daughter is in a safe place. Then, she hears an explosion, and runs to the church to see what happened. The mother couldn’t find her daughter in the building ruins; all she can salvage is one of her daughter\'s white shoes.

At the surface, this poem is about a girl who wants to protest for freedom but her mom wants her to be safe, so she sends her to church instead. While the girl is at church a bomb explodes and the girl never makes it back to her mother. A lot of history goes into understanding “Ballad of Birmingham” with greater detail. It isn’t just about the little girl and her mother, there is more to the story than just the surface. “Ballad of Birmingham” is a depiction of what might have happened between the mother and child of one of the girls that lost their life the day of the bombing. What bombing you might ask, well on September 15, 1963 “The 16th Street church which was the first and largest black church in Birmingham” was bombed down by “a bomb planted in the church’s basement”. According to Lonnie Bunch “a moment that the world would never forget”. Four young girls lost their lives that day. The next day life went on as normal. No one talked about it nor did they take a moment of silence. Carolyn McKinstry, who was in the church on the day of the bombing, thinks this was the case because “there was nothing we could do about it”. It was simply a way of life and they were black and not respected in society. “It didn’t matter that blacks were killed, that little girls were killed in Sunday school.” Black lives were disposable to white people no matter what the age. Even the police who are supposed to protect all lives acted as if there was nothing they could do about it. There was simply nothing done to give closure to the families that lost a child in the bombing. “The community…did not think white people were going to convict one of their own for the death of black children”, which stayed true for 14 years until someone finally answered for the crime. This bombing wasn’t the only bombing that occurred in Birmingham. According to Joiner, around this time, Birmingham, Alabama was called “Bombingham” because there were “80 unsolved bombings in the city” and the bombing of the church was the only one solved.

If you think deeper into what the poem could mean you find a lot more. First off this is a young girl which we can infer because of the use of children and child to describe people the daughter's age and the daughter herself. Times are so bad for people of color that the young generation feels like they need to take part for a difference to be made. We usually think of adults being the caretakers for the children but the children are joining in to be the caretakers of their people. Age no longer mattered because more was at stake and people of all ages needed to come together to make a change. During this time of hate and inequality, parents felt that their children we safer in church than outside in the streets with all of the chaos. But on this horrific day in history, the church was the least safe place for anyone to be. You are meant to feel safe in the house of God and the last thing you expect is for someone to stoop so low as to destroy the house of God. But that day, Sunday the 15th of September in the year of 1963 at 10:22 AM, the church was the last place you wanted your children to be.

Imagery adds to the feeling of regret and sadness in those who read it. According to Caldwell, the images that Randall uses, “illustrates the utterly inhumane and destructive results of social and racial bias.” The poem as a whole is imagery. It invokes the image and thought of a mother and child. Everyone can relate to the mother-daughter relationship or even just the love of a mother to their child. The use of a mother and child makes the reader feel more attached to the poem and invokes the thought of the reader's own mother. The description of the daughter getting ready for church brings a powerful image full of symbolism. “And bathed rose petal sweet, / And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, / And white shoes on her feet.” White gloves, white shoes, small hands, rose petal sweet are words chosen to describe the girl as she was getting ready for church. Words that hold more meaning than just that of the surface. Nothing harmful can come from small hands. The smell of roses is calming and also known as the odor of sanctity which is associated with the smell of a saint. White gloves and white shoes, white chosen to represent goodness, innocence, and purity. The girl's shoe found amongst the “bits of glass and brick,” without the girl in sight represents the innocence being lost in the destruction. A pure life lost and ruined by the dark and evil.

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that a character doesn’t know. “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.” “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.” “The mother smiled to know her child / Was in the sacred place,” Despite what the child has to say in objection to her mom, the mother stayed on her instinct that her daughter was not safe on the streets but safest in church, “the sacred place”. The mother wanted only for her daughter to be safe during the time of chaos. Ultimately the desire for the mother to want her daughter to be safe led to her daughter’s demise. If only she let her daughter go protest with the other kids amongst the guns, dogs, clubs, and hoses, her daughter might have made it home that day. What is worse to think about is according to Carter, “The daughter’s preparations for church become her preparations for death”. Reading this poem with knowledgeable mind about the events leading to this poem makes it that much sadder and hard to read. The irony just makes you want to scream at the mother not to make her daughter go to church. The overall piecing irony in this poem is that during this time period “an African American child is safe nowhere in Birmingham”. If this poem was written to show a mother allowing her daughter to go protest, who is to say that the girl would have returned home safely. It may have just been the same outcome. We will never know because as Carter put it, “The child who eagerly wanted to raise her small voice in protest of social injustice has been silenced”.

In “Ballad of Birmingham”, Dudley Randall makes us feel the pain felt the day of the accident and pulls us into that day and moment through his use of history, imagery, irony, and symbolism. History plays an important role in the emotions and understanding of this poem. Without the history, the impact is not the same. Imagery and symbolism play together in order to create this clear image of a young innocent girl against the hate and destruction of white people during this time period. Ironically if the mother would have let her daughter go protest with the other children the daughter probably would have never encountered such destructive hatred. Randall tells the story of the 4 little girls who lost their lives that day in a beautifully sad and meaningful manner. What I learned from reading this poem is that there is hate everywhere and hate finds its way even to the purest of us all.