Dudley's 'Ballad Of Birmingham'

When I first saw the title, "Ballad of Birmingham" I thought that this poem is going to be about the city of Birmingham and how beautiful it is. Then I saw what was beneath the title which said, "On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963." I now know that the poem is going to be about a bombing, something I know but the characters don't. That sentence also tells me it takes place in 1963 which is around the time of the civil rights movement.

The tragic poem, “The Ballad of Birmingham,” begins with a young child asking an imploring question to her mother, “May I go downtown instead of out to play” (Randall, 669)?

“But you may go to church instead” (Randall,15) a mother thought her child would be safer in such a sacred place rather than being a part of the march that just might have been safer. The poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, has multiple themes, but the one that sticks out is violence, which is because it is so powerful and brings the whole poem together. There is also a lot of imagery shown through this whole poem that can put a horrible picture in your head because of how sad the poem really is.

In 'Ballad of Birmingham,' Dudley Randall illustrates a conflict between a child who wishes to march for civil rights and a mother who wishes only to protect her child. Much of this poem is read as dialogue between a mother and a child, a style which gives it an intimate tone and provides insight to the feelings of the characters. Throughout the poem the child is eager to go into Birmingham and march for freedom with the people there. The mother, on the other hand, is very adamant that the child should not go because it is dangerous. It is obvious that the child is concerned about the events surrounding the march and wants to be part of the movement. The child expresses these feelings in a way

“But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.”

     The Ballad of Birmingham resembles a traditional ballad in that it tells a story in a song-like manner. The didactic tone seeks to teach us something; in this case it’s the theme of needless destruction. There are many devices the author uses to create such a tone and to tell such a story.

The article,”When School Was Scary” shows a mood of sympathetic by showing how the Little Rock Nine were bullied every day for the color of their skin. The poem,” The Ballad of Birmingham” shows a mood of sympathetic by using a little girl’s death as the center of what happened. It doesn’t say she died but the reader infers that the girl is dead based on the evidence shown. In the text,”When School Was Scary” it says,” White students were mean to the Little Rock Nine every day. They threw ink, books, and rocks at them.

The Watsons Go To Birmingham shows the theme of being different in these ways. In The Watsons Go To Birmingham the Watson kid’s cousins are protesting against white Supremacy because they weren't getting rights due to their different skin color. This is important

Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” is a look into the effects of racism on a personal level. The poem is set in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The tone of the title alludes to the city of Birmingham as a whole. The poem gives the reader, instead, a personal look into a tragic incident in the lives of a mother and her daughter. The denotation of the poem seems to simply tell of the sadness of a mother losing her child. The poem’s theme is one of guilt, irony, and the grief of losing a child. The mother feels responsible for the death of her child. The dramatic irony of the mother’s view of church as being a “safe haven” for her child is presented to the reader through the mother’s insistence that the young girl

The article “When School Was Scary” and the poem, “The Ballad of Birmingham” share a common central idea, but they present it in different ways. One example is how in “When School Was Scary” they show that segregation was occurring by showing what the Little Rock Nine went through trying to get in and go to school. In “The Ballad of Birmingham” however, they say that segregation is occurring. In the article “When School Was Scary”, the author shows the reader that the central idea is that you should fight for what you believe in.

The poem Ballad of Birmingham, by Dudley Randall is about the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama during 1963. The poem begins with a question and ends with a completely different question. It starts with a girl asking her mother a question: “Mother dear, may I go downtown / Instead of out to play, / And march the streets of Birmingham / In a freedom March today?” (lines 1 - 4). It ends with the mother asking: “But, baby, where are you?” (line 32). The author uses literary devices, such as rich word choice, vivid imagery, and alliterations, to bring up important issues of racism, questions of freedom and safety, and to contribute to the poem’s thematic significance. Randall also uses a question and answer form between the mother and

One of the other biggest literary devices that Randall uses in the poem is symbolism. There are keys words in the line of the poem that hint toward or symbolize parts of society. “ ‘Ballad of Birmingham’ is a historical marker” (Boyd 65). The society that is being represented here comes from the Civil Rights Movement. Violence is one of the main symbols represented throughout the poem “For the dogs are fierce and wild, / And clubs and hoses, guns and jails” (Randall 6-7). These words depict the violence. Unfortunately, the words in the poem that depict violence could also describe the policemen during the Civil Rights Movement. Many times the policemen would start the violence during the protests. Described through the words of the poem, it

In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”, Dudley Randall chooses to use standard ballad conventions to recreate this terrible time in American history. Ballads are poems that tell a story, most often associated with childhood or a childhood memory. The way he turns a story of a mother losing her child into a poem really makes the impact even stronger. Randall also uses the viewpoints of both the mother and daughter so the reader can understand all sides of the story. Ballads are typically stories in the form of a narrative poem that focuses on the actions and dialogue of a situation. Dudley Randall makes excellent use of ballad convention in this poem, which amplifies the effect on the reader.

The racial dichotomy between white and black in the poem contributes to the young boy accepting his position in the world as a slave. In the first stanza, the young boy acknowledges his blackness but believes his soul is white. “My mother bore me in the southern wild,/ And I am black, but O! my soul is white;/ White as an angel is the English child:/ But I am black as if bereav'd of light” (1-4). While the first stanza describes the young black boy and his location, it also clearly indicates what the young man lacks—whiteness and being from a European city. The first few lines associate whiteness with purity, whereas blackness is associated with darkness and dehumanization.

In River Hymns, specifically “Dirt Cakes” and “Southern Silence,” Tyree Daye depicts Youngsville as a small, rural, population with white majority and contains racial divisions -- racism. The adults in the family have to let loose and forget what has happened throughout the week with drinking and dancing. This shows the back, growling work that they are forced into, and that the work is in a bad working environment. He writes in a way that is not happy or joyous but in a gloomy and dark way. He adds symbols and lots of description into the poems to help emphasize some of the points he is making, especially the problems in the town. At first, he feels like he has a place in the town but later realizes through reflection that he was never truly welcome by most of the community. Through the use of symbols and description, he explores the racial divide that his small town in rural North Carolina contains. As a result, the poems suggest that a place can change a person’s view of the world, and can contain many problems with great divides amongst the people living there.