What is the structure, or traditional closed form, of "Ballad of Birmingham"?

It is reasonable to consider that the lyrical nature of
the ballad appealed to Dudley Randall since traditionally African and African-American
history has been recorded orally and the tribulations of the people sung in spirituals
and blues songs. As a ballad Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham" is composed of eight
quatrain stanzas with the second and fourth lines rhyming. Most of the lines contain
four stresses, as is traditional for a ballad.

This ballad
tells a tragic story of the ironic refusal of a girl's mother who would not allow her
small daughter to march in the streets of Birmingham during the Civil Rights Movement.
Instead, she sends her girl to church, thinking there she will be safe. However, the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed. The motive behind the bombing was the fact
that this large church in downtown Birmingham served as the headquarters for civil
rights rallies with such as the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, author of Project C, to
help with the desegregation campaign. 

Much like the
spirituals and Blues, the Randall's ballad is very poignant in its tragic story of the
innocent girl's dying.

readability="11">

She clawed through
bits of glass and
brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O,
here's the shoe my
baby wore,  [four
stresses]
But, baby, where are you?" [shoe and
you rhyme--2nd and 4th
lines]