4 Little Girls
Ballad of Birmingham is a 1965 poem written by Dudley Randall. It was written in response to the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The poem depicts a young girl who wanted to go to the Freedom March instead of playing outside. The mother of the child refused to allow her to go to the Freedom March because it was too dangerous, instead sending her to church. There was a loud explosion heard everywhere, the mother was scared and worry about her daughter. She looked for her daughter, and found the shoe her daughter wore to church, and knew at that moment she was dead.
On September 15, 1963, the day of the explosion remain imprinted in the minds of many African American mainly those from Birmingham, Alabama which mark the day that four innocent young girls died in a racially motivated bombing at an African American Baptist Church. The four little girls names were; Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins. They were innocent casualties in a race war that raged in the Southern States, as well as the rest of the country. During this time people of all ages began the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement included young people as young as twelve years old that were involved, and relatively the same age as the four young girls who were murdered. This horrific crime motivated people to be involved in activism out of a sense of obligation, and to speak out against racially motivated violence such as the bombing. Director Spike Lee produced a documentary which was titled The Four Little Girls. Spike Lee did a beautiful job integrating film reel footage from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, along with interviewing segments that featured families, friends, and religious leaders connected with the victims, and the events that lead up to the tragedy. Coretta Scott King, late widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby add their perspective