The Ballad Of Birmingham 'And When School Was Scary'

Ballad of Birmingham, written by the poet Dudley Randall relives a tragic moment in time in which four little girls died when a church was purposefully exploded. This poem is based on the incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama. This poem vividly shows the perspective of a mother losing her child. Most of the poem includes a mother daughter discussion regarding the participation of the freedom march. The mother explains to her daughter that it is far too dangerous for her to be participate, therefore she sends her daughter to church, where she believes that she would be safe. The mother later hears of the explosion and runs over to find out that her daughter had been killed by noticing her daughter’s shoe on the ground. In Ballad of Birmingham, Dudley Randall uses voice, imagery, and sound to show how the tragic event revolves around a theme of racism/mother’s love, which most readers can empathize to.

Poetry often uses sound to maintain a flow that keeps the reader interested and involved in a poem. Onomatopoeia is used in both “We Wear the Mask” and “Ballad of Birmingham” in one way and another. In the “Ballad of Birmingham,” alliteration is used when the consonant “W” is used in the line “her eyes grew wet and wild.” (26) In the same respect, “We Wear the Mask” states “But let the world dream otherwise/We wear the mask.”(14,15) The sound of the “W” is also repeated three times in these lines. Assonance is also a common sound used in both of the poems. In “Ballad of Birmingham,” the vowel “O” is repeated in the line “No, baby, no you cannot go.”(4,13) Also, the vowel “E” is repeated in the line “It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes”(2) in “We Wear the Mask.” The way in which a consonant or vowel is repeated brings a pleasing sound to the reader’s ear. The only major difference that the two poems contain is that in “Ballad of Birmingham,” the tone of the poem changes from a normal

Nine African American kids were prevented from entering Little Rock Central High School. They weren’t able to be let into school; they were threatened as they walked towards the school, people would throw things at them like rocks so they could try and hurt them. They would hurt them not just mentally but physically; people would throw things and say mean things to them.

In 1963 a bomb went of in a church in Birmingham that killed 4 little girls. And a poem called ‘Ballad of Birmingham’ (written in 1969), and states some things that happened that day. In stanza 5 the author writes “She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair. And bathered rose petal sweet, And drawn white gloves an her small brown hands, and white shoes on her feet. This discribes on of the young black

    For instance at a Milwaukee Public School called Starms, onlookers have noticed that white students are in front of the line, while black students are in the back, kind of like the segregated days. If  a white student picks on a black student, the black students is usually the one who gets into trouble for it. Instead of disciplining or talking to both of the students a white teacher was witnessed pulling on the black students arm and yelling at the black student. As the black student tried to explain the situation, the teacher ignored them and did nothing

I think the author wrote the ballad of birmingham to express what the feelings and thought was in the extreme horrible time it was for the city and many people that lived there .

Just then the mother heard an explosion, and her eyes grew mad and welled up with tears. She ran through the streets of Birmingham, calling her child’s name out.

In the book, Warriors Don’t Cry, there are nine African-American students who chose to get involved in integration within an all-white high school. Many of the white students and parents did not approve of integration and demonstrated their hatred in a variety of ways. All nine of them dealt with an immense amount of torture every day at school. Warriors Don’t Cry shows many specific examples of when white students took their anger to a whole other level and did many brutal things like when they threw acid in Melba Patillo Beals’ face or when they threw small balls of flaming paper into the bathroom stall she was in. Though it’s been 60 years, schools are still very unsafe. School safety is a topic of importance, especially in the present day. As bullying and harassment become more prevalent in schools, students constantly feel insecure. The

The school, Winchester University, is a white ivy leagues school where they have a minority of black kids. Throughout the movie, there are many comments about race, and people are not afraid to say what they think, for example in the movie it is said that having just one African American as friend is not enough to pass as a non-racist. In the movie just the fact that you are white is an advantage, because you get better treatment, and you are put in a certain category, you are put in an inner circle. In the movie white kids are put together to living in the same houses while black kids would be all put together in the same house. In the movie there are clearly certain moments where people used their color as an advantage. An example of using color as a privilege, when they wouldn’t let Lionel in to a party just because he wasn’t part of an excuse or elite group

The way schools teach can make certain groups, like black people, feel less important because they do not talk about their experiences facing segregation and discrimination. This will keep the unfair treatment going. Black people have been oppressed by white people for a long time. They have been treated unfairly since a young age and faced oppression. In school, teachers often don't teach about Africa, race, or the people facing

For example, both poems have a theme of murder. Ballads normally have a sad or shocking story, so this is very common. In both poems the murderer is always hanged after murdering another person. In Charlotte Dymond, the murderer is her lover. In John Lomas, the murderer is John Lomas. The murder controls the ballads and there is no point in the ballads

Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” is a look into the effects of racism on a personal level. The poem is set in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The tone of the title alludes to the city of Birmingham as a whole. The poem gives the reader, instead, a personal look into a tragic incident in the lives of a mother and her daughter. The denotation of the poem seems to simply tell of the sadness of a mother losing her child. The poem’s theme is one of guilt, irony, and the grief of losing a child. The mother feels responsible for the death of her child. The dramatic irony of the mother’s view of church as being a “safe haven” for her child is presented to the reader through the mother’s insistence that the young girl

When thinking about a church, one would think it is a safe sacred place. In 1963, there was a bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. A mother of a little girl who lost her daughter too soon is the speaker of this poem. She didn’t want her

Students of color have their experiences at school belittled. “When students look to counseling, they are often told their racialized experiences are in their head -- that the college or university is color blind.” Dr. Ebony McGee, assistant professor of diversity and urban schooling at Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development

Inequalities in skin color at Wilson were very prevalent. This wasn’t because of the teacher, but the world around them. Each different color segregated themselves to “keep with their own.” The differences like this kept the students at Wilson from reaching their potential. When