An elegiac broadside

You can read the poem "Ballad of Birmingham" by Langston Hughes in his poetry collection "The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes" or on various online poetry websites and databases.

The speaker in the poem "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall is distressed because the mother sent her daughter to church for safety, only for her to be killed in a bombing. The poem reflects the tragedy and anguish of the Birmingham church bombing during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963.

The Ballad of Birmingham was created in 1969.

Dudley Randall wrote the poem "Ballad of Birmingham" in response to the 1963 racially motivated bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young African American girls. The poem reflects on the tragedy of the event and the impact of racism and violence on innocent lives.