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DUDLEY RANDALL
“BALLAD OF BIRMINGHAM”
1. Background: This poem was written in response to the September 15, 1963, bombing
of the 16th Street Baptist _________ in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed
four African-American girls.
2. What is a ballad? Give some characteristics of it.
(a) A ballad is a short ____________ poem, that is, a poem which tells a story.
It usually centers around one dramatic event, often involving a death.
(b) Frequently it uses a structure of a ____________ (a speech between two
characters).
(c) Many times it employs a refrain, that is, ___________ words or lines.
(d) A ballad typically has _______ lines, in which the first and third are not
rhymed, but the second and fourth do rhyme.
In poetic analysis, this rhyme scheme is indicated as abcb. The a and the c
signify that the first and the _________ lines do not rhyme. The b indicates
that the __________ and the fourth lines do.
(e) Sometimes a ballad employs rhyme within a line, which is termed
__________ rhyme.
3. How are these characteristics of the ballad used in “Ballad of Birmingham”?
(a) It is a short narrative poem which is centered on one dramatic incident—the
__________ of an African-American church which killed _______ girls.
(b) The first part of the narrative is by and large revealed through a dialogue of
questions and __________ between a mother and her ___________.
(c) “Ballad of Birmingham” uses a __________: “And _____________ the
streets of ________________” (3, 11, and partly in 27).
(d) It employs an _______ rhyme scheme in which the first and the third lines
are unrhymed and the second and the fourth are rhymed.
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(e) Internal rhyme is seen in lines 5, 13, and 21 in the words “no” and
“_____” and “smiled” and “________.”
4. In literature, a protagonist is a character who wishes to do or change something.
Who is the protagonist of this poem? Explain.
(a) The ___________, whose race is not explicitly revealed until line 19:
“And drawn ________ gloves on her small ________ hands.”
(b) Despite her young age, she is committed to social responsibility. She is
willing to give up time when she could be playing—“Instead of out to
_________” (2)—to join in the “__________ March” (4).
She says that she wants “To make our country _______” (12).
5. In literature, an antagonist is a character who opposes the goal of the protagonist.
Who is the antagonist at the beginning of the poem, and how may she be a
symbol? Explain.
(a) The _________.
(b) She displays protective love and fear for her child’s safety, and denies her
daughter’s twice-requested wish to participate in the Freedom ________:
“No, baby, no, you may not _____. / For the ______ are fierce and wild, /
And clubs and ________, guns and ________ / Aren’t good for a little
________” (5-8).
(c) Instead, the mother decides to send her daughter to what she thinks is a
safer place: “But you may go to _________ instead / And sing in the
_____________ choir” (15-16). After the girl is there, “The mother smiled
to know her ________ / Was in the _________ place” (21-22).
(d) Since the poem does not present the mother as even considering
_________ part in the Freedom March, much less letting her daughter join
it, Randall may have meant the mother to be a symbol of those African
Americans at that time who put ___________ matters and concerns above the
larger goals of the _________ Rights Movement.
6. Irony is a result which is the opposite of what is expected.
What irony is used in Stanzas 6-8 of “Ballad of Birmingham”?
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Ironically the “_________” (15), the “_________ place” (22) of safety to
which the mother sends her daughter, is the building where the child is
________.
7. At the end of the poem, the mother’s question, “But, _______, ________ are
you?” (32), forces the reader to ask herself or himself, “Where am I in the fight
for racial ___________?”
At this point who becomes the antagonist?
(a) Segregationists or racists who will even blow up a _________ to kill
African Americans.
(b) Thus the poem is a call to black Americans that ______ of them must
participate in the Civil _________ Movement in order for _______
individual black person to be secure and free.
(c) Its message is that no one can hide, no place is ______ when violent racists
roam the land.
8. The theme is the central idea of a literary work.
What is the theme of this poem? Explain.
The senseless brutality of _____________ bigots.
Bombing a __________ where they know (and rejoice) that there will be
____________ is a symbol of the viciousness and cowardice that is at the heart
of ____________ based on race.
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ANSWER KEY
1. Church.
2. (a) narrative.
(b) dialogue.
(c) repeated.
(d) four; third; second.
(e) internal.
3. (a) bombing; four.
(b) answers; daughter.
(c) refrain; march; Birmingham.
(d) abcb.
(e) go; child.
4. (a) daughter; white; brown.
(b) play; Freedom; free.
5. (a) mother.
(b) March; go; dogs; hoses; jails; child.
Note to teacher: In the early weeks of May, 1963, black children walked from the
16th Street Baptist Church toward the Birmingham Mayor’s office to protest
segregation. “Bull” Connor, the city Commissioner of Public Safety, ordered the
use of fire hoses and police attack dogs on them. Around three thousand
protesters were jailed.
(c) church; children’s; child; sacred.
(d) taking; personal; Civil.
6. church; sacred; killed.
7. baby, where; equality.
(a) church.
(b) all; Rights; each.
(c) safe.
8. racial; church; children; prejudice.
TO THE TEACHER: Below are details on the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church
(incorrectly listed in some online site as 17th Street) and on Dudley Randall and
characteristics of his poetry.
Some of these details you may wish to incorporate into your class’s discussion of “Ballad
of Birmingham”:
A. Bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
1. At 10:22 a.m., Sunday, September 15, 1963, nineteen sticks of dynamite, stashed
under an outside stairwell near the basement of the three-story 16th Street
church, exploded.
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2. When the bomb, rigged with a time device, went off, twenty-six children of the
congregation, part of the choir, were walking near the basement’s assembly room
toward the meeting hall.
3. The blast blew a massive crater in the side of the church. It destroyed a ladies
restroom, burst out windows throughout the structure, and filled the building
with dust and debris.
4. Twenty-two adults and children were injured, but most tragically four little girls died
instantly: Addie Mae Collins (14 years old); Denise McNair (11); Carole
Robertson (14); and Cynthia Wesley (14).
5. Worldwide revulsion (except among segregationists in Alabama and other Deep
South states) greeted this vicious slaughter of innocent children, and it
contributed to support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
6. Alabama and its governor George Wallace, who himself had called for some “firstclass funerals” to end racial protests in Birmingham a week or so before the
bombing, did nothing to try to trace down the bombers.
7. Not till 1977, fourteen years after the bombing, was Robert Edward Chambliss, a
member of the Ku Klux Klan, convicted of first-degree murder and sentence to
life in prison; he died there in 1985.
8. His known accomplice, all members of the KKK, remained free for a further twenty
years: Thomas Blanton was convicted in 2001 and is currently serving a life
sentence.
Bobby Blanton was similarly found guilty and died in prison in 2004.
Another suspect, who died a free man in 1994, was never charged. (Because he
was never charged, I do not list his name.)
B. Dudley Randall
1. Randall (1914-2000) took up poetry fairly late in his life, during his 50s.
However, with his first publication in 1965—“Ballad of Birmingham”—he quickly
was recognized as an important African-American poet.
2. His poems seldom use Black dialect, but most of them deal with the racism which
American Americans face.
3. His poem “Booker T. and W. E. B.” expertly and wittily summarizes the debate in the
20th-century African-American community over whose approach to racial
relationship should be followed, Booker T. Washington’s or W. E. B. Du Bois’s.