Poetry
Mr. Hart
The Ballad as a Form of Protest
On Sunday, September 15th, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb’s explosion ripped through
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The church had served as a meeting place for local civil
rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. Twenty-three people were injured, and four girls, all
aged fourteen or younger, were killed as they attended Sunday School in the church basement.
No one was prosecuted for the crime until 1977. It remains one of the key (and most sad)
moments in the country’s civil rights movement.
Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall 1966
(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 jail
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
