Ballad of Birmingham Analysis
The lyrics of the poem “Ballad of Birmingham,” by Dudley Randall, relates a horrific event attributable to the racism lived in Birmingham, Alabama, due to the civil rights movement. As the poem begins, a young girl asks her mother for permission to go downtown and join a freedom march. The mother afraid of the danger on the streets, refuses her daughter’s petition, but instead suggests her to go to church and sing in the children’s choir. The little girl listens to her mother’s suggestion, and gets ready to attend church. Now her mother’s mind is serene, thinking her child is safe in a sacred place. Serenity didn’t last long. Just a moment later, the mother hears an explosion coming from where her daughter is at. A tragedy has occurred. The mother desperately rushes to church, thinking about her loving child’s well-being, but it was too late. She couldn’t see her daughter again. All that was left was one of the white shoes her baby wore to church that day.…show more content… The poet is trying to make society see the devastation those wars are causing to innocent families. Although sometimes people believe what they are doing is right, nobody has control of the events that might happen at a given time and place. That misfortune could have had been avoided if she would have listened to her daughter. It is just a matter of being at the right place, at the right time.
As Dudley Randall’s poem seeks to emphasize the desire of a little girl to march, and to stand for her rights, Chude Pam Allen’s poem “For Justice and for Love” recalls the meaning of it, stressing a white woman’s wish to sing and to stand against adversity. Here, Chude Pam Allen characterizes this woman’s spirit of humbleness and her huge care for humanity by saying:
I have been told all my life that I cannot sing. But the thin brown-skinned man at the front of the
