12 Poetry for Students
tensions in the United States had grown so high by
then that just five days later, on August 11, a rou-
tine traffic stop by white police officers in the Los
Angeles neighborhood of Watts sparked one of the
worst riots in American history.
This and subsequent events, such as the assas-
sination of Dr. King in 1968 and the rioting that
followed, cannot help but influence readers’ reac-
tions to “Alabama Centennial.” Are readers wrong
to bring knowledge unavailable to Madgett into
their experience of her poem? Surely not. If a poem
is to be more than a lifeless artifact entombed in
language, it must grow and change with the wider
world. At the same time, readers have a responsi-
bility to remain rooted as much as possible in the
language, rhythms, and images of the poem itself
before looking beyond them.
Robert Sedlack, writing in the Dictionary of
Literary Biography,states that the narrator of “Al-
abama Centennial” “assumes the collective voice
of [civil rights] protestors.” There is a progression
from the “I” of the poem’s first line—repeated no
less than six times in the following lines—to the
“we” of line 28. Not only that, but the poet almost
immediately lets her readers know that the “I” is
not just a single person; after all, it is unlikely that
one individual could wait “for a hundred years” and
in such a wide variety of places as those featured
in lines 3-7. Just as the State of Alabama in the
poem’s title stands for both itself and all 50 states,
so, too, does the “I” stand for both an individual
person and a multitude of people. This is a com-
mon poetic device known as synecdoche: that is,
the use of a part to mean the whole.
The poem opens with a simple sentence: “They
said, ‘Wait.’ ” But nothing in this poem is as sim-
ple as it appears. Who exactly are “they”? The first
stanza continues in a list that includes cotton fields,
chain gangs, “stinking ‘colored’ toilets” and the
“outside of schools and voting booths.” Each of
these items powerfully evokes the narrow oppor-
tunities available to, and the humiliations and bru-
talities inflicted upon, generations of African
Americans under the Jim Crow laws. The narrator
speaks of waiting in these places, but for what? The
answer isn’t stated explicitly until the third stanza,
line 17, where the word “freedom” appears. But
even in the first stanza that answer is already clear,
partly because of the poem’s title and the histori-
cal ironies and associations embedded therein, and
partly because of the list of places carefully selected
by the poet to elicit specific reactions in her audi-
ence. The reader might therefore decide that “they,”the ones who tell the narrator to wait, are white
people, especially when the stanza goes on to con-
clude with the lines: “And some said, ‘Later.’ / And
some said, ‘Never!’ ”
The narrator is indeed referring to white peo-
ple. But not only whites. The ambiguity of the
words “they” and “some” allows the poet to cast a
wider net. Madgett has no interest in reducing the
problems of segregation and racism to a black ver-
sus white, good versus evil, dichotomy. The real-
ity she perceives is too complex for that.
The second stanza introduces “a new voice.”
This voice answers the voices of the first stanza.
“ ‘No,’ it said. ‘Not “never,” not “later,” / Not even
“soon.” / Now. / Walk!’ ” The poem moves from
the passivity of waiting to the action of walking:
the peaceful protest marches that were among the
most visible and successful tools of the civil rights
movement. The reader would not be wrong to iden-
tify this “new voice” with that of Dr. King, and in
fact, the sermon-like rhythms and even the lan-
guage and images of the entire poem closely par-
allel Dr. King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech
from 1963. But again, because the owner of the
voice is never explicitly identified, it seems to is-
sue from a multitude of throats in a force as fresh
and pervasive as the wind with which it is com-
pared: “Strong, determined, sure.”
In the third stanza, other voices join in to echo
“the freedom words.” Up until now, all the voices
in the poem have “said” their words. But suddenly
the words are whispered, sung, prayed, and
shouted. The explosive variety of verbs, contrasted
with the flat repetition of “said,” expresses the
mounting passion and determination of those who
walk “the streets of Montgomery.” This stanza is
the heart of the poem structurally; two stanzas pre-
cede it and two stanzas follow. It is also the heart
of the poem in a figurative sense, the turning point
where a dramatic change takes place. That change
occurs in the final line of the stanza: “Until a link
in the chain of patient acquiescence broke.”
It is worth looking at this line closely, for it is
the well-oiled hinge upon which the poem, like a
hidden door, swings smoothly and unexpectedly
open. The words “link” and “chain” suggest the
bonds of slavery which have continued to shackle
the supposedly free descendants of slaves even af-
ter a hundred years. But the chain the narrator refers
to is one of “patient acquiescence.” This is no iron
chain imposed by force or trickery upon African
Americans, nor is it even the more subtle but
equally restrictive chain of oppressive laws. It isAlabama Centennial