Nicholas Shephard

Rhonda Williams

Composition II

28 April 2017

The Fight Against Racism (Ballad of Birmingham)

One of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated by humanity was

how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, described the 16th

Street Baptist Church bombing which occurred in Birmingham, Alabama in September

of 1963. In the poem Ballad of Birmingham, our author Dudley Randall gives us a brief

summary of this horrific event. Randall writes about a young African American girl who

wants to participate in the Freedom March, also known as the March on Washington

which took place back in 1963. The little girl is told by her mother that she is not allowed

to participate in the march, but that she can go to church instead. The mother of the

child has the notion that her child will be much safer at her church rather than at the

Freedom March, and any mother in their right mind would have thought the same thing.

However, the result of that decision was something that no mother should ever have to

go through. While the little girl was at church that day, a group of four members of the

Ku Klux Klan planted several sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device underneath

the front steps of the church, and detonated the dynamite, killing four young girls and

injuring twenty two other people. This tragedy marked a major turning point in the Civil

Rights Movement, and contributed to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many

activists at the time stood up for these young girls whose lives were taken far too soon.

Rather than damaging the strength and perseverance of the African American people
fighting for equality, they turned this tragic event into inspiration and strength and

continued to fight for what they deserved; to be treated equally.

Equality has always been an issue in our country. Ever since the U.S. was

founded, discriminated groups and minorities have been seeking individuality and

equality. The biggest equality and racial issue our country has ever seen was that

towards African Americans, starting around 1619, when they were brought to the United

States as slaves. The slave trade was established in Africa because of the African

peoples immunity to older diseases, and the fact that African officials offered their own

people to European countries in exchange for weapons, cash crops, and money. After

about 250 years of slavery in the United States, it was abolished on December 6, 1865

when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Although slavery had finally

ended, racism had not. The end of slavery brought on an entire new wave of racism and

discrimination toward African Americans. Black Codes were an example of this new

racism. Black Codes were laws that restricted African Americans freedom. These laws

were put into place so that the governments in southern states could continue to socially

control the lives of African Americans after slavery was made illegal. Similar to Black

Codes, African Americans also faced discrimination in another form of rules set to

prevent them from reaching their goal of equality. These rules were known as Jim Crow

laws. Jim Crow laws were laws enforced by the southern state governments designed

to further racially segregate African Americans. One example of this segregation was

public schooling. African Americans who wanted to attend public schools were forced to

attend substandard, lower quality schools which were strictly prohibited to African

Americans only, even if those schools were farther away from their home than an all
white school. This issue is exactly what brought about the case of Brown v. Education

back in the early 50s, when a 3rd grade student in Topeka, Kansas was being forced to

walk six blocks from her house to reach her bus stop, and then ride a mile to her

segregated all black school, when there was an all white school just seven blocks from

her house. This example of racism and many more like it were what forced thirteen

Topeka parents to file a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education in an attempt to

eliminate the segregated schooling in southern states. Many more issues that were very

similar to this one started popping up all across the states as well. Certain colleges

strongly prohibited the enrollment of African American students, out of sheer racism

towards colored people. Uneducated African Americans were very unlikely to find jobs

that paid anywhere near a living wage, but they couldnt receive the education they

needed because of the laws set in place by the state governments. This issue played a

large role in the movement of over six million African Americans who left the southern

states to head up north in search of jobs and an education that would provide

themselves and their future generations with a better lifestyle. This movement was one

of the biggest movements of an ethnic group in history, and was known as The Great

Migration. The Great Migration brought about a huge change to the urban lifestyle, and

helped to reshape and change the lives of millions of African Americans for the better.

The success of these African Americans, and the issues that they were standing up to

and fighting against were exactly what motivated activists like Martin Luther King Jr,

who encouraged the black community to continue their fight for individuality and

equality, and to put an end to their prolonged suffering. This motivation and

perseverance was what helped to spark the March on Washington, lead by King when
he delivered his famous I Have A Dream speech in front of over 250,000 Americans in

a final call to end racism across the U.S.

Not even a month after the March on Washington, the horrific incident known as

the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, which was

carried out by four members of the largest and most historic hate group known to this

country; the Ku Klux Klan. This was just one of many attacks performed by this

extremist group during the reconstruction period, but the act of cruelty struck sorrow in

the hearts of Americans all across the country. Aside from this gruesome act, the KKK

was also known for terrorizing black people all across the southern states in an effort to

prevent them from having a voice in their societies and becoming equal citizens. The

Klan used extreme methods of getting their point across, such as; threatening, beating,

hanging, bombing, and killing anyone they didnt like or anyone who protected those

that they were against. They often publicly hung anyone they felt the need to, burned

crosses in the yards of those who disagreed with them, and terrorized African

Americans as well as several other minority groups around the southern states. The

KKK struck fear into the hearts of their enemies, who some leaders described as

anyone that wasnt a racist white christian. The goal of the Ku Klux Klan was to return

the southern states to how they were before the Civil Rights Movement, and to end the

progress that men and women had been fighting for for almost three hundred years. But

little did they know that that progress was far from irreversible.

The progress that the people of the United States have made is something to be

very proud of, and a lot of people never thought that our country would make it to the

place that we are at today. People like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Oliver Brown,
and many other leaders that stood up for themselves and others will never be forgotten

for their fight, and for the difference that they made in the lives of African Americans,

minorities, and groups of individuals that were never treated as such. Although the

progress has been made, the fight against racism and discrimination in the United

States is far from being over. Our country has progressed, and it will continue to

progress and move forward as it has done for the past several hundred years. The fight

against racism is a fight that can be won, and a fight that will be won. Denis Leary, a

famous American actor once said Racism isnt something youre born with, its

something youre taught. The dream of the American people moving forward needs to

be the same dream that Martin Luther King Jr spoke about. A dream of love and

compassion, rather than hate and cruelty towards one another. It is a dream that should

be taught, and a dream that should be rooted in the heart of every American, and it is a

dream that this country will one day see come true.

Works Cited

King, M. C. (1992). Occupational segregation by race and sex, 1940-88. Monthly Labor Review, 115(4),

30. Retrieved from https://libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?

url=http://libcatalog.atu.edu:2083/docview/235663537?accountid=8364

Trial in '63 bombing. (2002, Feb 04). Scholastic News, 70, 2. Retrieved from
https://libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=http://libcatalog.atu.edu:2083/docview/212800120?
accountid=8364
Sloan, Jane and Carlos E. Cortes. Multicultural America : A Multimedia Encyclopedia. SAGE
Publications, Inc, 2013. EBSCOhost, libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?
url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=719561&site=ehost-
live&scope=site

Conklin, Wendy. Civil Rights Movement. Teacher Created Materials, 2008. Primary Source Readers.
EBSCOhost, libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=259959&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Gordon, Ann D. and Bettye Collier-Thomas. African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965.
University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. EBSCOhost, libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?
url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=13833&site=ehost-
live&scope=site

Larson, Gerry. "Dreaming in Color, Living in Black and White (Book Review)." School Library Journal,
vol. 46, no. 4, Apr. 2000, p. 149. EBSCOhost, libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?
url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN=2981729&site=ehost-
live&scope=site

Agnew, Vijay. Interrogating Race and Racism. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing
Division, 2007. EBSCOhost, libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=682586&site=ehost-live&scope=site