Ballad Of Birmingham Literary Analysis

Ballad of Birmingham – Literary Analysis

In the poem, “Ballad of Birmingham” written in 1969, Dudley Randall conjures one of the most vicious significant event during the Civil Rights Movement as evidenced by the epigraph which follows the title: On the Bombing of a Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963. Randall effectively utilizes the ballad form, striking irony and vivid imagery to convey the inevitable consequences of societal inequality through the eyes of a mother and a child.

Firstly, Randall uses ballad form to tell the story of a mother and her child. A ballad has a fixed rhythm and rhyme, while in this particular poem, it consists of quatrain stanzas that rhyme in an ABCB rhyming scheme. This organized and regular pace creates the rhythm of people’s consistent stomping during the “Freedom March”. As ballad is known as a narrative poem, the first stanzas open with a dialogue between the mother and her young daughter.

The touch of situational irony pervades throughout the poem and thus, builds up the tension between expected and the real outcome. Randall indicates the tragic fact that mother’s maternal love cannot prevent her offspring from the destructive power of societal discrimination. The young child displays a strong persistent to “march on the streets of Birmingham” (3). Yet, the mother repeats, “no, baby, no, you may not go” twice at line 5 and 13, which shows the mother’s worries and fear for her child’s well being as she has the knowledge that peaceful marches and rallies comes violence and hostility where “guns will fire” (14). With the wish of keeping her daughter at a place with relative safety, she conveys, “you may go to church instead and sing in the children’s choir.” (15-6) Despite church is typically believed as a holy and safe place, it is ultimately where the child meets her demise. The church is sacred ground, yet it proves to be no sanctuary. Randall shows that the mother’s action has an effect exactly opposite from her initial intention and has to endure the horror and disillusion left by the bomb.

Furthermore, Randall uses striking imagery to evoke readers’ various sensory experiences. Readers are invited to visualize and hear a mother and daughter conversation in stanza 1 through stanza 4. Their dialogue evokes visual images of many civil rights demonstrators marching through the street of Birmingham. In stanza 2, “dogs”, “clubs”, “hoses”, “guns” and “jail” suggests the images of fights and riots where danger and animosity prevail. In stanza 5, the imagery centered on the little girl’s appearance, where she has “combed and brushed her night-dark hair” (17), “white gloves on her small brown hands” (19), “white shoes on her feet”. The contrast between the color “night-dark” of her hair and the “white” of her clothing immediately strikes the reader visually. Through the child’s attire, Randall indicates the purity and innocence of the child even though the world is filled with chaos, while her dark hair and “brown” skin tone reflects the darkness of the society that she is situated at. However, the white can also interpreted as the symbolic color of funeral and tragedy, which hints on the death of the child. The scent of “rose petal sweet” (18) evokes a fragrant image, which Randall further emphasizes on the pureness of the child. The imagery shifts suddenly into an explosion, where the mother frantically races through the streets of Birmingham, with “her eyes grew wet and wild” (26) while “calling for her child” (28) in vain. The striking image of the “bits of glass and brick” (29) denotes the helpless mother’s shattered heart.

“Ballad of Birmingham” concisely depicts a tragic event in American history through the use of structure, irony and imagery. Through the shocking ending of the poem of this unfathomable tragedy in a church, Randall not only offers a poignant reminder the readers but also intend to spreads the message to the world, stressing on the importance to eradicate discrimination and segregation among the people and fight for freedom and equality together in order to prevent such devastating event to occur again.