Category : Poems
Sub Category : N/A
I heard this on the radio on the Benmont Tench Show on Tom Petty Radio a few years ago and it had a profound effect on me. This poem by Dudley Randall is about a Birmingham Alabama church bombing in 1963 that left 4 young girls dead and injured 21. The girls wanted to go to the freedom march downtown but their moms wouldn't let them thinking it was too dangerous so they sent them to church instead. The anniversary of this horrific incident is tomorrow September 15th.
If you get a chance, google the Ballad of Birmingham Tennessee State University and listen to the song that this poem was made into.
Ballad of Birmingham
BY DUDLEY RANDALL(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 jails 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?
”Dudley Randall, “Ballad of Birmingham”
from Cities Burning. Copyright © 1968 by Dudley Randall. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Dudley Randall.Source: Cities Burning (Broadside Press, 1968)
