My first response to the poem "Ballad of Birmingham," by Dudley Randall, was that it was very tragic and heartbreaking as the poem expresses the worries and fear that the mother has for her little girl. The mother is afraid of sending her daughter to the peace marches as she knows there can be hostility and violence, which is why the mother told her daughter to go to church and "sing in the children's choir." The mother still believes that there is a place safe from racial hatred. The mother is so sure that going to church, instead of going to the march, will be the best thing for her girl. I found myself more engaged in the emotion of the poem as I, too, think a church is a safe and sacred place where I would not imagine a bombing or any other type of violence to happen. However, going to church at that time turned out to be the worst place for the girl in the poem to be. Also I found there was lots on emotion when the mother said "no, baby, no, you may not go" and "But, baby, where are you?" .
Both the poem and the newspaper article address the bombing in Birmingham, but in different ways. The poem addresses the bombing in a more personal view in the form of a mother losing her daughter in the bombing. However, the newspaper article addresses the bombing in a more general perspective providing the reader with specific events and the aftermath of the bombing. For example, the very first sentence of the article says "A bomb severely damaged a Negro church today, killing four Negro girls and setting off racial rioting and other rioting in which two Negro boys were shot to death" (Claude Sitton 15). Also, in the newspaper article it is blatant that there are racial issues surrounding the bombing as the word "Negro" is used several time throughout the article whereas in the poem, the word "Negro" is never used.
