Why did Langston Hughes write the poem “Birmingham Sunday”?
“Birmingham Sunday” was written less than two weeks after the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, considered by many historians to be a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, influencing President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign into law new civil rights legislation the following year. The poem commemorates the deaths of the four young girls who were killed in the blast.
