REFLECTION ON THE “BALLAD OF BIRMINGHAM”

When Barack Obama spoke the evening of November 4, 2008 and recalled some of the ugly incidents blacks had to endure, I recalled a poem I always had my students read when I was teaching literature at Cuyahoga Community College. In “The Ballad of Birmingham” poet Dudley Randall captures the tragic horror of racism in eight short stanzas.

Ballad of Birmingham

(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

"Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?"

"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child."

Written by Dudley Randall (1914-2000)

Copyright laws allow me to post only a few lines from the poem, so I urge you to click on the following link to read the entire poem:

http://library.thinkquest.org/12111/church.html.

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