A Study Guide for Naomi Long Madgett's "Alabama Centennial"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Naomi Long Madgett's "Alabama Centennial," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535817769

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Alabama Centennial

Naomi Long Madgett

1965

Introduction

Alabama Centennial is a poem from Naomi Long Madgett’s third book of poems, Star by Star, published in 1965. It is representative of one of the two general categories into which her poems are divided: the lyric poems of her youth (influenced by Romanticism), and the more directly political works which recognize and trumpet the importance of civil rights issues for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Clearly, Alabama Centennial falls into the latter category as it is a rhetorical recounting of the protest slogans and activist experience in Montgomery, Alabama, and other places. The poem was the result of a conversation Madgett had with a visiting scholar from the Netherlands, Rosey E. Pool. They first met in Detroit, where Madgett was to live for most of her life, and then began a correspondence. Clearly the poem is a proclamation of the strength of African Americans in their fight for civil rights. By mentioning certain historical protests and marches, it also serves as a chronicle. Perhaps it is most vehement though as a demand, as with its recounting of the trials and suffering of African Americans it announces that the chain of patient acquiescence has broken and the time for equality and dignity is