There are moments alliteration throughout the poem. Take the /m/ sounds in the first line, which immediately give the poem a musical quality and make the daughter's words sound catchy and sweet:
"Mother dear, may I go downtown
However, her mother remains unconvinced and even uses the daughter's tactic against her by setting forth her own alliterative line, repeating the /n/ sound in a way that sounds nearly as musical as the daughter's opening line:
No, baby, no, you may not go
Like the daughter, the mother uses alliteration to enhance the sound and cadence of her words. To that end, the mother's alliterative musicality gives readers the sense that she has said this phrase time and again. In turn, alliteration alerts readers to the dynamic at play between the daughter and her mother, both of whom want to convince the other as they argue about whether the daughter should be allowed to attend the Freedom March.
Other moments of alliteration appear throughout the poem as well, such as when the unidentified speaker uses the phrase "wet and wild" to describe the mother's eyes in line 26: "Her eyes grew wet and wild." Similarly, the speaker repeats the /b/ sound in line 29 in reference to the mother's search for her daughter in the rubble of the church bombing: "She clawed through bits of glass and brick." In both cases, the speaker uses alliteration to intensify the auditory aspect of the line, thereby adding a sense of urgency to the poem's most emotionally charged moments.
In keeping with this, the speaker repeats the /b/ and /w/ sounds in the last two lines:
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"
Above all, this kind of alliteration heightens the desperation in the mother's voice. As a result, readers are able to more thoroughly feel her pain, regret, and horror.