Do you like history and a good read? Well, Dudley Randall brings the two together in his adaptation of an event from history. Born in 1914 and died in 2000, Randall was an African-American poet. His most notable work is The Ballad of Birmingham, originally published in 1965. The poem was written in response to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. “Ballad of Birmingham” concisely interprets a tragic event and manages to capture the malicious and painful moments of the civil rights movement in a short poem about a mother and daughter. After “considering the extent to which the audience controls the form of the message,” I determined that this poem was written for all audiences. It is a beautiful poem that can be read by everyone and is written for everyone. No hateful or disrespectful language is used, only painful and innocent language. The poem is not written to show how angry and hateful black people should be towards white people, but rather to evoke regret and sadness in those who read it. In "Ballad of Birmingham", Dudley Randall makes us feel the pain felt on the day of the accident and draws us into that day and moment through his use of story, imagery, irony and symbolism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayA young girl asks her mother's permission to walk the streets of Birmingham. The girl's mother forbids her child from going there because it could be dangerous. The young girl tries to convince her mother again by telling her that other children will come with her. The mother still forbids her child from going there and simply asks him to go to church. The girl puts on white gloves and shoes then leaves the house, the mother lets out a relieved smile knowing that her daughter is in a safe place. Then she hears an explosion and runs to the church to see what happened. The mother was unable to find her daughter in the ruins of the building; all she can salvage is one of her daughter's white shoes. On the surface, this poem is about a girl who wants to protest for freedom but her mother wants her to be safe, so she sends her to church instead. While the girl is at church, a bomb goes off and the girl never returns to her mother. It takes a lot of history to understand the “Ballad of Birmingham” in more detail. It's not just about the little girl and her mother, there's more to the story than just the surface. “Ballad of Birmingham” is a depiction of what might have happened between the mother and child of one of the girls who lost their lives on the day of the bombing. What bombing you might ask, well, on September 15, 1963, "the 16th Street Church which was the first and largest black church in Birmingham" was bombed by "a bomb planted in the basement of the church.” According to Lonnie Bunch, “a moment the world will never forget.” Four young girls lost their lives that day. The next day, life returned to normal. No one spoke about it and no one observed a minute of silence. Carolyn McKinstry, who was in the church the day of the attack, believes this was the case because "there was nothing we could do about it." It was simply a way of life and they were black and not respected in society. “It doesn’t matter that black people are being killed, that little girls are being killed in Sunday school.” Black life was available to white people regardless of age. Even the police, who were supposed to protect all lives, acted as if they could do nothing about it.TO DO. Nothing has simply been done to bring closure to the families who lost a child in the bombing. “The community…did not think that white people were going to convict one of their own for the deaths of black children,” which remained true for 14 years until someone finally answered for the crime. This attack is not the only one to have taken place in Birmingham. According to Joiner, at that time, Birmingham, Alabama was called "Bombingham" because there were "80 unsolved bombings in the city" and the church bombing was the only one solved. If you think deeper about what the poem could mean, you'll find a lot more. First of all, it is about a young girl, which we can infer through the use of the term children and child to describe the age of the girl and the girl herself. Times are so bad for people of color that the younger generation feels like they need to pitch in to make a difference. We usually think of adults as guardians of children, but children join us in becoming guardians of their people. Age no longer mattered because the stakes were higher and people of all ages needed to come together to make change. During this time of hatred and inequality, parents felt their children were safer in church than outside on the streets with all the chaos. But on that horrible day in history, church was the least safe place for anyone. You are supposed to feel safe in God's house and the last thing you expect is for someone to stoop so low as to destroy God's house. But on that day, Sunday September 15th in the year 1963 at 10:22 a.m., church was the last place you wanted your children to be. The images add to the feeling of regret and sadness in those who read them. According to Caldwell, the images used by Randall “illustrate the utterly inhumane and destructive results of social and racial prejudice.” The poem as a whole is imagery. It evokes the image and thought of a mother and her child. Everyone can relate to the mother-daughter relationship or even just a mother's love for her child. The use of a mother and child makes the reader more attached to the poem and evokes thoughts of their own mother. The description of the girl preparing for church provides a powerful image full of symbolism. “And bathed in soft rose petals, / And white gloves drawn on her little brown hands, / And white shoes on her feet. » White gloves, white shoes, little hands, sweet rose petals are words chosen to describe the girl as she prepared for church. Words that mean more than just the surface. Nothing harmful can come from little hands. The smell of roses is calming and also known as the smell of holiness which is associated with the smell of a saint. White gloves and white shoes, white chosen to represent goodness, innocence and purity. The girl's shoe found among the "pieces of glass and brick", without the girl in sight, represents the innocence lost in the destruction. A pure life lost and ruined by darkness and evil. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that a character does not. “No, baby, no, you can't go, / For the dogs are fierce and wild, / And clubs and pipes, guns and prisons / Are no good for a little child.” “No, baby, no, you can't go, / 'Cause I'm afraid these guns will shoot. / But you can go to church instead / And sing in the children's choir. "The mother smiled to know that her child/was in the sacred place. "Despite what the child has to say.