Empathy In Ballad Of Birmingham

Drawing Traumatic Empathy from “Ballad of Birmingham”

The 1960s were a riotous decade for America, particularly for those who lived in the South. During this period, the South was under legalized racial segregation due to the influence of Jim Crow laws. In support to end these laws and establish civil rights for all Americans, protests, demonstrations, and marches took place across the country. However, as not everyone supported this movement, substantial backlash was inflicted upon many by those opposed to change; which Dudley Randall writes about in his poem, “Ballad of Birmingham.”
Before I begin to analyze the poem, it is necessary to review the pertinent facts of the Birmingham Bombing. The city of Birmingham, Alabama, was established in 1871 and quickly became the state’s key

industrial and commercial center. Beginning in the 1960s, it also became one of the most racially prejudiced and segregated cities in America with one of the toughest and most brutal chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. Due to the city’s white supremacy ideals and reputation, Birmingham became a key focus of civil rights activists in attempt to desegregate the South. During the 1960s, several civil rights marches and protests took place in Birmingham’s streets, often beginning at the doorsteps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, as it had been a momentous religious center for the city’s African-American population.
As a matter of course, Ku Klux Klan members often delivered bomb threats with intent to upset services and civil rights meetings that took place at the church.

On September 15, 1963, a bomb detonated on the east side of the church, killing four young girls and sending families across America into horrific shock. As difficult as it was to respond to this tragedy, Dudley Randall, an African-American writer and poet, wrote his sorrow into the lines of “Ballad of Birmingham.” The rhyming poem with simplistic style and heart wrenching matter tells of a time when those who fought to keep the spirit of equality alive were also mourning the death of four young girls. The historical event described in the poem happened to four African-American mothers and daughters in Birmingham. However, I will argue that Dudley Randall’s, clear and simplistic, use of poetic singsong effects, the tradition of broadside ballads, diction, and symbolism in “Ballad of Birmingham” is designed to draw empathy from any reader, no matter his or her race, as the poem itself lends to a violent ending that helps readers feel how heart-rending this racist, cowardly violence was, leaving them in a space of

trauma.
Additionally, it is necessary that I review some basic ideas about trauma and trauma theory in order to help the readers of this paper understand how they may experience a powerful, disturbing, and emotional reaction from “Ballad of Birmingham.” Trauma is referred to as “a person's emotional response to an overwhelming event that disrupts previous ideas of an individual's sense of self and the standards by which one evaluates society” (Balaey). In addition, since trauma is “timeless, repetitious, and infectious” it can support:
A literary theory of transhistorical trauma by making a parallel causal relationship between the individual and group, as well as between traumatic experience and pathologic responses. The theory indicates that a massive trauma experienced by a group in the historical past can be experienced by an individual living centuries later who shares a similar attribute of the historical group, such as sharing the same race, religion, nationality, or gender due to the timeless, repetitious, and infectious characteristics of traumatic experience and memory. Conversely, individual trauma can be passed to others of the same ethnic, racial, or gender group who did not experience the actual event, but because they share social or biologic similarities, the traumatic experience of the individual and group become one. (Balaey)
Therefore, a poem about a traumatic historical experience, like that of which the “Ballad of Birmingham” is written about, can be recreated for readers and experienced by them even though they were not there.
One way this poem reaches its readers is through its simple and straight forward emotions. During an interview, in 1997, Ampadu asked Randall, “One of the qualities present in your writing is its ability to communicate simply and directly. Explain your rationale for using language in this way. Did critics attack you for not writing in a more verbose way?” Randall responded, “Well, I try to be as clear as I can because I want people to understand what I’m saying. I hope I don’t make them too simple; then it becomes simplistic. No, critics never talked negatively about that aspect of my work” (Ampadu). This direct quote from Randall illustrates how the clear and understandable writing standards that he set for himself, in his work, solidifies the meaning, purpose, and significance in “Ballad of Birmingham.” One place this is seen is in lines 21 through 24:
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
In line 21, the word “smile” is clear and simple, every reader understands what a smile is and what it means; it represents some form of happiness. Then in line 22, the words “sacred place” remain clear, yet they are not too simple as Randall chooses to use “sacred place” as a synonym for “church,” which may have been too “simplistic” to use, something Randall said he hopes to