There are many literary works that address the violence associated with the civil rights movement. These works, though written for different reasons, essentially serve the same purpose. Two such works are a poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall and an essay by Martin Luther King, Jr. entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Though these pieces of literature were written for different reasons and have many differences, they both in their own way bring attention to and shine light on how unsafe African Americans were during the Civil Rights Movement in America.

Dudley Randall’s 1969 poem, “Ballad of Birmingham”, was written to commemorate the 1963 death of four young girls in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. In “ Ballad of Birmingham”, Randall illustrates the terrible state of society during the Civil Rights Movement. Randall uses many different techniques, such as plot, setting, language, point of view, characters and theme, to show the reader that during this time period African Americans were not safe, no matter how innocent and in the most sacred of places.

The plot of the story was the most effective way Randall showed the struggle that the characters were having with the hatred of society. This struggle, also referred to as conflict, was both internal and external. The central conflicts that drive the plot are the conflicts between the mother and her fears and between the daughter and the mother. The conflict between the mother and the daughter is about how the child should support her race in their fight for civil rights. This struggle between the mother and the daughter is resolved when the mother allows her daughter to go “to church instead/ And sing in the children’s choir” (Lines 15-16). The conflict between the mother and herself and the mother and the force of evil is never truly resolved. The mother is in conflict with the force of evil over the safety of her child. She seems to have won the struggle when she allows her daughter to go to a safe haven where the young girl could not possibly be harmed, the church. This assumption proves to be totally false, since the daughter is, in fact, killed. The events were revealed in this way to show the innocence of the characters making the reader feel compassion for both characters and then cause sad emotions in the reader when the daughter is killed. These emotions give the reader the sense again that Alabama was not a safe place because the sweet little girl is killed by the force of evil.

In “ Ballad of Birmingham” the characters seemed to have some form of motivation for their actions. The daughter is obviously motivated by the Civil Rights Movement in a positive way. She wanted to participate in the march so she must have been motivated by the positive press of the events of the Civil Rights Movements. The mother had a fear of the Civil Rights Movement, “for I fear those guns will fire” so she must have been motivated by the negative press of the events such as the riots that occurred during the time period and how violently they were “controlled” (Line 14). The characters in this poem do change significantly. This change in the characters is brought about by the side effects of the evilness of society during the time period. The mother in the story smiles her “last smile” because she is forever changed by the death of her child who is killed in result of evil.

e death of the young girl at the end of the poem more tragic. He does this by making each character seem innocent. The two speakers, the mother and the daughter, are referred to as “baby” (Line 5 and 13) and “dear” (Line 1), respectively. These words make the reader feel compassion for these two characters. There is more of an effect on the reader in the daughter’s case than in the case of the mother because the daughter is repeatedly referred to as “baby”. When the reader sees the word “baby” they think of innocence, the daughter is referred to as “baby” only when the mother is speaking. Any other time in the story the daughter is referred to as “she” or “child”. When the narrator is speaking as in lines 17 and 21 he does not use the endearing term to refer to the little girl. This shows how much the mother cares about her daughter. Since the reader views the daughter as an innocent and the mother as very caring, they are devastated when the innocent child is killed and the mother loses the child she cares for so much.

King’s thesis in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is stated in the third paragraph of the essay. He says in this paragraph that he has come to Birmingham because there is injustice in Birmingham (King 1). The remainder of the essay is dedicated to supporting this thesis. King proves that there is injustice in Birmingham through the discussion of Jim Crow Laws, corrupt government, corrupt clergymen, and the violence in which the African American people of the city endure. These means of supporting were very effective.

Randall was very much influenced by historical events as many author

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