“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (King). In saying this, Martin Luther King Jr addressed the prejudice that African-Americans used to face. Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments in the United States Constitution gave them equal rights, segregation was still common in most areas until the mid-1900s. Churches, schools, and even water fountains were separated into “Whites only” or “Blacks only.” In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”, Dudley Randall expresses the horror of racial discrimination in the 1960s. He shows these horrors through the true story of a young girl, who was one of the casualties in a church bombing. In the first stanza, there is some dialogue between a young girl and her mother. The girl says, Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a Freedom March today? Her mother responds by saying, 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. …show more content…
She knew that it usually got very violent, and she did not want her daughter to be a part of it. When the mother said, “No, baby, no, you may not go,/ For I fear those guns will fire,” it gave a sense of fear because she was genuinely afraid that someone would be so vile as to shoot a little girl. She says, “But you may go to church instead/ And sing in the children’s choir.” She knew the church was a sacred place, so she wanted her daughter to pray for her freedom instead of risking her life for it. The tone turns dark quickly through the last two