An Analysis of the Ballard Form Structure of the “Ballard of Birmingham”
The "Ballad of Birmingham" is a poem written by Dudley Randall in 1969. This poem is about a young African American girl who wants to go to the Freedom March with other children. Her mother would not let her because she believed it was too dangerous of a place. Instead, the mother suggests that her daughter go to choir practice at the church because she believed this would be a safe place to be. That church was then bombed and the young girl was killed. In this poem, Randall structures the poem in a ballad form in order to show how the tone changes throughout the poem.
This poem is presented in a ballad form in order to show the tone of the poem and also the mood and feelings of the mother. The author used the ballad to show how the mood of the mother shifts throughout the poem. At the beginning of the poem, the mothers tone is a serious and protective one. She does not want her daughter going to the Freedom March because she wants her daughter to be safe. The mother refuses to let the daughter go, even despite the fact that the daughter asks twice. The middle of the poem has a calm and relaxing tone because it gives a detailed description of the daughter and what she was wearing. It depicted her an innocent child. At the end of the poem, the tone turns sad because the mother hears about the bombing and rushes to the church. At the church she cannot find her daughter, only a single shoe.
The structure of this poem says nearly the same throughout the whole poem. There are eight stanzas in the poem and each stanza has four verses. The second and fourth verse in each stanza rhymes. This helps the poem flow smoothly and also helps the ballad form. Each of the stanzas has a specific part of the story that continues throughout the whole poem and fits together to make one story about the bombing at the church in Birmingham.
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The theme of this poem is that even the safest places can be dangerous and be prone to racism. This poem depicts what life was like during the 1960s and how racism was everywhere. The irony of this poem is that the mother sent her daughter to the church because she thought it would be safer than the Freedom March when in turn the church was actually the dangerous place. Most of the times when somebody thinks of a church, they think of a sacred place where no harm can be done. That was not the case in the poem.
The author uses certain words to help show the mood and tone of the poem. In the first four stanzas, some words used to back up the serious and protective tone are
"And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
aren't good for a little child."
(Randall, "Ballad of Birmingham." II 7 and 8)
In the fifth stanza, the author uses many different words to describe the innocent girl and how she is dressed. These words are
"She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
and bathed rose petal sweet."
(Randall, "Ballad of Birmingham," II 9 and 10)
These words reflect the calm and relaxing tone during these stanzas. The last stanzas have a sad tone which is backed up by the words "She clawed through bits of glass and brick, then lifted out a shoe." The author chose these words carefully to show how he felt about the poem and what was going on during the 1960s with racism.
This poem is very accurate historically. In an interview with Carolyn McKinstry, a women who witnessed the bombing, many facts are giving about what happened. She starts off by talking about Birmingham and how everything from schools to churches were completely segregated. She then goes on to describe the bombing in detail such as glass and windows crashing in. She paints a picture in the reader's head about the bombing. (Joiner, L. (2014). Marvin K. Peterson Library at UNH. [Online].
This interview is very different than what some newspaper articles stated. An article in the 1963 New York Times talks about the bombing but gives little details. It then shifts over to how African Americans were protesting what happened and how they got killed. This article shows a little bit of bias and strays away from the actual details and event of the bombing, even though that's what the article is supposed to be about. (Sitton, C. (2014). Birmingham Bomb Kills 4 Negro Girls In Church; Riots Flare; 2 Boys Slain. [Online] Nytimes.com.) This helps to show that during the 1960s, racism was everywhere, including in the newspaper.
This poem can be related to our society today because even in today's world there is still some racism around. Also, the poems theme is that even the safest places can be dangerous which is very true in today's society because many bad things happen in different places such as schools or hospitals. This poem is very historically accurate and also delivers a strong message about how racism is bad because it can get innocent people hurt.
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An Analysis of the Ballard Form Structure of the “Ballard of Birmingham”. (2023, Feb 24). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/an-analysis-of-the-ballard-form-structure-of-the-ballard-of-birmingham/
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