Ballad of Birmingham (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Cobbs, Elizabeth H., and Petric J. Smith, Long Time Coming: An Insider’s Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing that Rocked the World, Birmingham, AL: Crane Hill, 1994.

  This is a firsthand account of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church written by the state’s witness and niece of the convicted bomber, Robert Chambliss.

• King, Woodie, Jr., ed., The Forerunners: Black Poets in America, Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1975.

  King’s collection includes selections of poetry and personal statements from a range of poets from the 1960s and 1970s, including Dudley Randall who also wrote the collection’s preface. Many of the writers included here published their work with Broadside Press.

• Randall, Dudley, Broadside Memories: Poets I Have Known, Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1975.

  Randall includes both poetry and nonfiction in this collection celebrating the writers and history of Randall’s Broadside Press.

• Thompson, Julius, Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995, New York: McFarland, 1998.

  This is the most recent critical study of Randall’s and Broadside Press’s influence on the African-American literary scene in Detroit.

• Williams, Juan, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, New York: Penguin, 1987.

  In this companion volume to the PBS television series of the same name, Williams clearly and vividly recounts the history of the civil rights movement in America. As well as being a very readable, straightforward historical account, this book is full of photographs, in-depth interviews with individual members of the movement, and reprints of important texts, such as Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.