In 1969, Dudley Randall published his poem “Ballad of Birmingham” in response to the historic event of the 1963 bombing of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church by white terrorists. It is a dialogue between mother and daughter during which the daughter asks her mother to join the Freedom March and ultimately ends up dying in a church explosion. The poem became Randall's greatest work and leaves readers with a deep emotion about the tragedies of segregation in the 1960s. Dudley Randall was born in Washington, D.C., on January 14, 1914. His first memory of composing a poem was when his mother took him to a band concert. Impressed by the big bass drum and bass, the four-year-oldIn each verse, the second and fourth lines rhyme, which makes the conversation between mother and daughter sound like an up-tempo song. From the first stanza, readers can feel the irony and metaphor of the poem. The detail that the little girl wants to go to the freedom march contains a metaphorical meaning. As a child, she behaves like an adult thirsty for freedom. He lives in a time when racial discrimination is a major problem in American society. Randall also implies that she herself is an African girl when she describes her brown hands: "And he drew white gloves on her little brown hands" (line 19). In an unjust system characterized by racism, blacks are the minority and do not have the same rights as whites. In reality black people have no freedom, but the girl insists on going out for freedom. This irony evokes readers' curiosity about the following stanzas of the poem. Responding to her daughter, the mother tells the girl to go to church instead, because she fears that the protests and violence will harm her daughter: “No, baby, no, you can't go/ Because I'm afraid those guns are going to shoot/ But you can go to church instead/ And sing in the children's choir” (lines 13-16). As an adult, the mother knows the grave dangers of racial hatred outside her safe home, so she tries to protect her daughter from foreseeable risks. However, ironically, he suggests that his daughter go to church, which ends up being the girl's funeral anyway. There are different levels of tone of the two characters and the narrator. While the little girl presents a tone of innocence and joy, the mother's tone shows anxiety. Despite concerns for her daughter's safety, the mother dresses her neatly. With “white gloves” on her hands and “white shoes” on her feet (lines 19, 20), the little girl is ready for her joyful day. Randall intentionally uses the word “white” to emphasize the purity and innocence of the girl who loses her life in the church, a sacred place. From the seventh stanza, the tone is immediately changed to pain and loneliness on the part of the narrator. We can feel the tremendous emotion in every line of the last two stanzas. Hearing the explosion, without thinking for a moment, the mother runs like a madman towards the church, where she remains paralyzed between "pieces of glass and bricks" (line 29), and where she can only find her daughter's shoe. The last two lines return to quotes that create an unanswered question from a grieving mother: "Oh, here's the shoe my baby wore / But, baby, where are you?" This is a strong ending to a poem full of emotion and the use of the question leaves readers with an unspeakable feeling