Ballad of Birmingham (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Dudley Randall
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Work: Ballad
- Genres: Poetry, Ballad
- Subjects: African Americans, Civil rights, Discrimination, Girls, 1960’s, Children, United States or Americans, Racism, Blacks, Race, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, Social issues, Bombs, Church or churches, Explosions or explosives
The Poem
September 15, 1963, was not a typical Sunday in Birmingham, Alabama; it was a day of devastation. Sunday school had just ended at the Seventeenth Street Baptist Church when nineteen sticks of dynamite, stashed under a stairwell, exploded. Twenty-two of the black congregation’s adults and children, although injured, survived the bombing. Four little girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, did not. The bombing was a horrific reminder of the dangers of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s as well as of the even greater danger...
[The entire page is 1254 words long]
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