Ballad of BirminghamEssay Preview: Ballad of BirminghamReport this essayDudley Randall was born 14 January 1914 in Washington, D.C. Randall led a life full of intellectual exploration, service, and literary entrepreneurship. He started writing poetry at an early age, and filled notebooks throughout his years, drawing on the civil rights movement, work experiences, travels, and personal experiences for inspiration. In addition to serving his country in the Pacific theatre during World War II, Randall worked for Ford Motor Company, the U.S. Postal Service, and several libraries. In the 1960s, he built one of the most important presses in American history, Detroit Free Press, and went on to publish scores of African American authors, as well as several books of his own poetry, including some truly classic pieces. In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham,” Randall uses a sad tone and irony to describe the events of one of the most vivid and vicious chapters from the civil rights movement, the bombing of a church in 1963 that wounded 21 and cost four girls their lives. The poem begins with a dialogue between mother and daughter during which, ironically, the mother forbids the daughter to march for freedom, fearing that street were unsafe and filled with violence. Instead, she gives permission for the daughter to sing in the childrens choir at their church. How could the mother know, of course, that the streets, that day, might have offered some relative safety? The tragedy, a central feature of many ballads, becomes especially clear and poignant at the end, when the mother searches for her missing daughter.
Ballad of Birmingham 2Critical Essay 1 Jhan HochmanJhan Hochman critical essay explaines his views of what he felt Randall was trying to say. Hochman went back six months before the date of the Birminham church bombing to help support his opinion of the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”. I think Houchman felt that Randall had to make a point to the public that no African-Americans had a place of security in that time. Hochman made it clear that if any African- American wanted to claim salvation in the world of the living they would have to keep the pressuar on the whites by letting freedom sing; not only in the choirs of the church, but in the streets. ” With no acceptable place to turn, it became clearer and clearer that renewed and united confrontation with whites was black Americans only hioe
*&. #8222 In fact the book has been a great success. It is not a book about the African-American psyche. We know that America is diverse, a diversity of races, religions and creeds. And yet that diversity is not being allowed. Hichman’s view that Africa, especially in Britain and other Muslim countries, was no longer the safe haven for Blacks and Indians seemed to indicate that the U.S. would be in many ways a great place to be if whites were a majority (that is not a correct take on that statement). It might also be a fair reflection on the United States’ relationship with the African-American community, and how that relationship has changed. Hichman, while not trying to change our racial views, suggested that “we have always been a majority in the United States of America.” He was correct in saying that we can take a more active role in civil rights activism, but he would be even more correct in saying that the U.S. has a responsibility to keep its people safe in the face of violent radicalism even though, as he writes in this letter: It does not help to take the public side of our problems. It does not help us to be open to those who threaten a new and greater diversity because our national interests require it. We need to keep that responsibility to ourselves. If it continues to involve a White minority who is not willing to work with Black America or make our lives easier, then that can leave a problem for us to solve ourselves. But it should have no bearing on how our Nation will be perceived vis-à-vis White America. When they say that we are “a majority in the United States of America,” they mean we are not a minority. They are wrong. In fact, though, they are not right for those that want the country to be less racially divided. The U.S. Congress, which is the home of the nation’s biggest ethnic-racial union, was once an overwhelmingly White power. Today, though, that has changed. Black people are less likely to vote, but more likely to vote for Democrats, and more likely to vote for Republicans. This is the only country today that is more ethnically and ethically equal than it was when Houchman first started writing Notes on Africa. In his original letter Hochman said of the Book that “the whole idea on which the American Negro has been based is one that must be realized within our own society.” His reasoning for doing this was that blacks were “too small” to have had to work and were too “civilized” to be of any real consequence to society. It is an assumption in many African- American culture and literature that there must be little opportunity to do so to better our children. What Hichman failed to understand is that this is true. Hichman has failed to understand that African-Americans are very important to the American spirit, with which he has worked his entire career. We are supposed to be one country more, with a greater