Ballad of Birmingham

The church has a dual meaning in the poem. On the one hand, the church is a symbol for safety and caution for the mother, who doesn’t participate and doesn’t want her child to participate in social protest because she sees it as dangerous. Ironically, the church is also a symbol of social protest and danger. Historically, the church where the four little girls were killed in a bombing was the 16th Street Baptist Church, which served as a site for organizing protests and training protestors in nonviolent resistance. As such, the church made an irresistible target for white supremacist terrorists, who bombed the church to disrupt the nonviolent protests. The destruction of the church is thus a symbol of the depravity of those opposed to equality for Black Americans.

The shoes and the gloves also have multiple symbolic meanings in the poem. The mother clads her daughter in white shoes and gloves as a gesture of her love and care for the daughter. In Western culture, the color white is traditionally associated with purity or innocence. When the mother dresses her daughter in white gloves and shoes, it is a testament to her belief that she can protect her daughter from the violence of the world.