Volume 10 13
hard to see how those chains could be character-
ized as patient or acquiescent. No, this chain is an
inner chain forged by fear and habit within the soul
of the narrator, who, it should not be forgotten,
speaks for multitudes. Freedom does not lie sim-
ply in breaking the chains imposed by racist white
society. Those chains must certainly be broken, but
the poet suggests more is necessary. Note that it is
not enough to walk. Walking is only the beginning.
The narrator walks until a link in the chain of pa-
tient acquiescence breaks. The narrator is that link.
The chain is made up of many links, each an indi-
vidual African American who must, like the narra-
tor, decide to patiently acquiesce no more. In other
words, the poet is stating that African Americans
must wake to their own complicity in the racist sta-
tus quo. Suddenly, with a shock, the reader real-
izes that the “they” of the first stanza is not made
up of whites alone, but of African Americans as
well. It is difficult to convey the hostility this mes-
sage would have generated in the increasingly mil-
itant atmosphere of the civil rights movement of
the mid-1960s. Indeed, it remains a controversial
opinion nearly half a century later.
Once this inner awakening or liberation has oc-
curred, real transformation of self and society can
take place. This is what happens in the fourth and
fifth stanzas. The “new voice” from the second
stanza returns, demanding more of its listeners than
mere walking. “Sit down!” it exhorts. “Ride!”
“Kneel!” “March!” Each of these sharp commands
evokes a protest tactic of the civil rights movement,
from lunch counter sit-ins to freedom rider voter
registration drives. The “I” of the poem, both indi-
vidual and collective, vows to “march until the last
chain falls.” And now the chain refers to both the
inner chain of patient acquiescence and the outer
chain of racist society. This is a process that, once
started, cannot be stopped. “Not all the jails can
hold these young black faces / From their destiny
of manhood, / Of equality, of dignity, / Of the
American Dream / A hundred years past due. /
Now!”
There are three things to note about these clos-
ing lines. First, the freedom the narrator claims for
the “young black faces” is to be found within the
American system of government, not outside it.
Unlike such groups as the Black Panthers, the nar-
rator does not wish to escape or overthrow the
American Dream but rather to join in. Second,
while the poem begins with the word “wait,” it ends
with “Now!” A transformation has taken place in
the all-important line 22, an individual awakening
of political and social awareness that prompts a
change of stance from passive acceptance to active
engagement. Third, in a sharp historical irony,
women are missing from the narrator’s call for free-
dom, equality, and dignity. The destiny the narra-
tor refers to is one of “manhood.” This omission is
a kind of blind spot, reflecting the reality of 1965,
when the women’s liberation movement, itself in-
spired by the civil rights struggle, had yet to emerge
as a powerful force in its own right. So it is that
even as the poem’s triumphant last word rings in
the reader’s mind like the peal of a bell stirring a
sleepy countryside to action, the echo of that bell
down the years is somewhat attenuated and flat-
tened due to the interpolation of events, of history,
between “Alabama Centennial” as Madgett wrote
it and the poem’s contemporary reader.
Source:Paul Witcover, in an essay for Poetry for Students,
Gale, 2001.Karen D. Thompson
In this essay, Thompson discusses how Mad-
gett’s diction and structuring of “Alabama Cen-
tennial” contribute not only to the poem’s pace, but
also to its irony.A title like “Alabama Centennial” conjures im-
ages of a parade winding its way down Main Street
featuring the high school marching band; little chil-
dren run out into the street, while parents caution
them, and pick bright disks of candy from the hot
asphalt where clowns riding ridiculously small tri-
cycles have thrown it. Festive picnickers sate their
holiday appetites with weightless biscuits that
threaten to float away if they’re not held onto, cold
fried chicken that’s still crispy and smells of grease,
and peach cobbler heavy enough to bend a foil bak-
ing pan held by the edges.
This is a realistic picture of an Alabama Cen-
tennial, is it not? Centennial, after all, means cele-
bration.
No.
Centennial connotes,but does not denotecel-
ebration. It means simply a period of one hundred
years, or the marking of one hundred years. In Mad-
gett’s poem, the word “centennial,” far from sug-
gesting a celebration, evokes serious and sad
retrospection. For in “Alabama Centennial” Mad-
gett bemoans a hundred years of the failure of the
United States to deliver the justice promised by the
Civil War, and she mourns the tragedy of lost lives
and the degradation endured in the charade of “sep-
arate but equal” living conditions.Alabama Centennial