became major poets of a new generation. Under
Randall’s leadership, Broadside Press, in its glory
days from 1965 to 1976, published more than 400
poets in more than 100 broadsides, books, and
recordings. Broadside Press, which continues to
publish today, was among the most important and
influential presses of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT.
As a poet, Randall is best known for his most
frequently anthologized poem, “Ballad of Birming-
ham,” which he wrote in response to the Klu Klux
Klan’s bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, in which four young black girls were
killed. Set to music by songwriter Jerry Moore, this
poem was first published as a broadside; Randall
launched the press simultaneously. In this poem,
he employs the conventions of the ballad, in which
the naive questioner addresses the older, suppos-
edly wiser respondent. In this case, a child asks her
mother for permission to participate in a freedom
march in Birmingham’s streets. Wanting the child
to be safe, the mother suggests instead that her
baby go to church, fearing the “clubs and hoses,
guns and jails,” all allusions to Bull Connor’s reign
of terror in the spring days of 1963 Birmingham.
Confident that she is in a “sacred place,” the moth-
er’s smile freezes when she hears the explosion and
races “through the streets of Birmingham / calling
for her child” but finding only “the shoe [her] baby
wore.” As a broadside, the first edition of the ballad
recalled the elegiac broadsides of earlier centuries
and suggested the possibilities and choices that
were available in graphic formatting to beginning
poets who wished to be published.
In his poetry, Randall made frequent use of
autobiographical incidents for subject matter. His
travels to Russia in the summer of 1966 ignited
his interest in translating and publishing such
Russian poets as Pushkin; his study in Ghana in
1970 allowed him to connect his poetry with his
African reflections. When Detroit, among other
cities, burst into flames and rioting in the sum-
mer of 1967, Randall responded with Cities Burn-
ing (1968), a collection of poems that reflected
the turbulence of the era. When MALCOLM X was
assassinated in 1965, Randall and Margaret Bur-
roughs coedited the first book by Broadside Press,
For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and the Death of
Malcolm X, a collection that honored a political
figure as poetic inspiration: “What they admire
in Malcolm is that he didn’t bite his tongue, but
spelled out the evil done by the white man and
told him to go to hell” (xxi). In addition to his
work for Broadside, Randall edited The Black
Poets: A New Anthology (1971), which contributed
more new voices, helping define a black poetry
that was “turning away from white models and
returning to its roots” (xxvi).
Randall was named poet laureate of Detroit in
1981, but his crowning compliment was a Lifetime
Achievement Award in 1996 from the National En-
dowment for the Arts.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Randall, Dudley. Cities Burning. Detroit: Broadside,
1968.
———, ed. The Black Poets: A New Anthology. New
York: Bantam, 1971.
Randall, Dudley, and Margaret Burroughs, eds. For
Malcolm: Poems on the Life and the Death of Mal-
colm X. Detroit: Broadside, 1967.
Margaret WhittReading Black, Reading Feminist:
A Critical Anthology
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. (1990)
In his introduction to Reading Black, Reading
Feminist (1990), editor HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., ex-
plains the importance of an anthology focused on
black feminist theory:In reading these texts, we overhear a black
woman testifying about what the twin scourges
of sexism and racism, merged into one oppres-
sive entity, actually do to a human being, how
the combination confines the imagination,
perplexes the will, and delimits free choice.
What unites these texts, what makes them co-
here into that imaginary metatext we call a tra-
dition, is their shared structures and common
themes. (7)428 Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology