Analysis Of The Poem ' Ballad Of Birmingham '

The time during the civil rights movement was full of great struggles for african american’s in the southern United States. During the 1950s-1960s we saw some of the most influential figures in civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King and Rosa Park making strides for equal rights for all people. Even with these advancements for equality, the southern United States still had a lot of racial tension and people with the inability to accept change in the mentality for all people to be equal. It was where in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama where another tragic event took the lives of more innocent black people at the Seventeenth Street Baptist Church where a bombing was held that was orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan; This incident influenced a poet by the name of Dudley Randall to write the “Ballad of Birmingham”. This event was one of the most poignant moments in the african american search for liberty, which is a possibility why Randall chose to write this poem as a ballad. With the ballad being a piece of writing for a dramatic event, it makes the poem more memorable and significant to show how important it was to african americans during that era. This poem is in the voice of one of the mothers of the victims. As well as the use of the ballad, Randall uses examples of visual language and irony to really emphasize his point of poor current state for the progress for civil rights. These points are what really grabs the reader’s attention and tugs on the reader’s heart to what tragedies actually where happening to people during that time. There are many examples of this throughout the poem including one at the end where the mother reference her innocence earlier in the poem as she explains “ And drawn white gloves on her s...

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... poem. No matter how much she wanted her daughter to be safe and avoid any kind of confrontation, even the sidelines are dangerous during a time of tension.

The ballad was an excellent tool of story telling which also had underlining meaning with how blacks were treated during this time in the middle of the century. The irony of the poem could be considered one of the biggest aspects of this poem because not only does it build up through the poem itself, but it describes how blacks dealt with injustice and fear that anything could happen to them at any time. Along with that, the language in the ballad provided an element that created imagery for the reader and a connection so that this poem is more memorable. With these aspects together, it shows what is actually at stake in the struggle for equality during a time of great tension for blacks in the United States.