Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall - Essay Example

As the first stanza initiates with the daughter’s request “Mother dear, may I go downtown / Instead of out to play, / And march the streets of Birmingham / In a Freedom March today?” (Randall, Poetry Foundation) a critical reader who could well relate with the historical relevance herein understands what a ‘Freedom March’ was meant for. The march of freedom has something to do with the long-term struggle of the dark-skinned regarding civil rights issue and the social injustice of the whites in the form of segregation by color and racial discrimination.

Thus, since Randall himself is black, the poet may be claimed to have created “Ballad of Birmingham” under such theme as to evoke the excruciating sentiment of the black community toward the widely experienced oppression and harassment in the misdeeds of the white counterparts who consider themselves superior in race. In this light, it becomes necessary for the characters, both mother and daughter, to be assumed as black individuals based on the beginning expressions of desire by the daughter to join the march for freedom.

Randall opts for the mother’s child to possess a female gender in reference to the fact that four young Afro-American girls who frequented the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church for Sunday school lost their lives at the time of the bombing (Marshall, 2012). Through the mother’s begging reply of “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”, the lurking presence of danger in the neighbourhood or somewhere near their residence may be perceived readily.

At the time, the terrorizing acts of the supremacist movements led by the whites had spread and were feared especially by the black people so the mother in the story could probably be referring to the notorious members of an extreme organization such as the Ku Klux Klan upon mentioning the ‘dogs’ that are specifically ‘fierce and wild’ by nature. As can be felt from the heart of her concern, the mother truly has every sound reason to hold back her daughter from leaving just to imagine the perils awaiting the fragile creature who would be soon detached from home.

‘Clubs and hoses’ as well as ‘guns and jails’ are words that concretize what may be treated as device or tools of destruction like the bomb which was utilized to blow the Baptist church (Marshall). Exchange of sweet phrases between the parent and the child appears to consist of a lyrical tone and attitude that it would seem a musical scenario, a ballad, as such conveys an account of a mother’s genuine protective love for her daughter. Even if the mother is strictly inclined to refuse the child’s imperative on repeating “No, baby, no, you may not go” and justifying “For I fear those guns will fire.

/ But you may go to church instead / And sing in the children’s choir”, still the daughter as all the other children would insist due to the confidence of having a company to tug along, thinking that it would appease her mother to know that a bunch of friends would do to monitor her for security. Nevertheless, she