Ballad of Birmingham

Ballad of Birmingham poem is authored by Randall Dudley which is mainly centered on the actual bombing that occurred in the year 1963 in a church that belonged to African Americans.  The poem is centered on the general attempt of an African American woman trying to offer protection to her daughter by denying her the right to participate in the ongoing march and sends her to church to participate in the choir.  The protection ends up being unsuccessful as the church which was a source of protection is bombed (Armstrong, and Schmidt, 120).  I believe that the main message of the poem is particularly centered on racism which had dominated the western nations in the 19th century (Armstrong, and Schmidt, 121). Based on the setting of the poem and the manner in which the mother tries to protect her daughter this, therefore, portrays the theme of racial discrimination.

The use of the child innocence helps in connecting the situation that was in existence.  The portrayal of the innocence respondent of the child generally shows that the innocence may not stay based that the setting in the battleground of Birmingham (Armstrong, and Schmidt, 121). The narrator states that the daughter leaves to head to church and the mother smiles develop a sense of emotion.  This is mainly because she runs to church only to miss her daughter in the rubbles. The format of the poem is symbolic naturally as it shows that the ending of the poem may not be positive. In addition, the poem utilizes the images of both lights as well as darkness in generating the civil rights fights with the innocence individuals.  For instance, the mother carefully brushes their daughter’s dark night hair thus placing white shoes on her daughter’s feet. After the mother hears of the explosion her eyes are grown wet as well as wild which is a symbol of devastation foreshadow (Parini, 450).  The mother cannot find her daughter but she can only trace her white shoes that her innocence had already been devastated. The use of literary devices in the poem helps in connecting the theme of the poem which is racism effects.

 

 

 

            Work Cited

Armstrong, Julie B, and Amy Schmidt. The Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. Print.

Parini, Jay. The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry. , 2006. Print.