The Ballad of Birmingham is a poem written by Dudley Randall in 1965.
In the poem, a young girl joins a protest on the streets to fight for racial equality. However, her mother stresses that white police brutality makes it unsafe for her to participate. Despite the young girl’s protests that it is her right to be an activist if she chooses, her mother refuses to let her attend. Instead, her mother suggests she attend church. But, instead of keeping her safe, the church is attacked, and an explosion occurs. The mother desperately looks for her daughter but cannot find her in the disaster.
Randall wrote the poem in response to the white supremacists’ bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which resulted in the death of four black children. The aim of the attack was anti-segregation, as the supremacists opposed key leaders at the time, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The poem consists of thirty-two lines in eight stanzas. It also follows a ABCB rhyme scheme, with use of perfect rhymes throughout. There is a nursery-song quality to the poem, which puts it add odds to the contents of the song.
