Analysis Of Ballad Of Birmingham

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Ballad of Birmingham By Dudley Randall (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?” Analysis (Ballad) The tragic poem, Ballad of Birmingham, written by Dudley Randall, follows the form of a ballad, a poem that has stanzas consisting of four lines that rhyme in an a-b-c-b rhyming scheme. This rhyming scheme occurs when the second and fourth lines of a stanza, rhyme and the first and third lines do not rhyme at all. The poem was written as a response to the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama in which four African-American girls died. The bombing was believed to work of the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation notorious for its hate crimes towards minorities. As ballads are narrative poems, the Ballad of Birmingham contains multiple characters and dialogue. The Ballad of

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