Birmingham Sunday by Langston Hughes

Posted September 13, 2010 by k_c_ in Inspiration

Birmingham Sunday
(September 15, 1963)

Four little girls Who went to Sunday School that day And never came back home at all But left instead Their blood upon the wall With splattered flesh And bloodied Sunday dresses Torn to shreds by dynamite That China made aeons ago- Did not know That what China made Before China was ever Red at all Would redden with their blood This Birmingham-on-Sunday wall.

Four tiny girls
Who left their blood upon that wall,
In little graves today await
The dynamite that might ignite
The fuse of centuries of Dragon Kings
Whose tomorrow sings a hymn
The missionaries never taught Chinese
in Christian Sunday School
To implement the Golden Rule.

Four little girls
Might be awakened someday soon
By songs upon the breeze
As yet unfelt among magnolia trees

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