Survivor of 1963 Birmingham church bombing talks loss of sister, friends

“Denise walked over to Addie and said, ‘Addie, would you tie my sash?’” recounted Sarah Collins Rudolph. “We all was sitting there watching her [get ready to] tie her sash and all of a sudden I heard this sound. Boom!”

A bomb had exploded beneath the stairs next to the bathroom where the girls were.

Collins Rudolph, then 12, later was rescued from the rubbish of the bombing with the loss of sight in her left eye. Her sister, Addie Mae Collins, 14, and friends, Denise McNair, 11, Carole Rosamond Roberts, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, all had lost their lives in the bombing. Others were injured.

“I believe that God spared my life to tell this story,” Collins Rudolph told a group of more than 65 guests at the Salem Baptist Church of Jenkintown Sunday afternoon.

Rudolph’s talk was organized by the Anna Julia Cooper Education Center for Human Excellence and the Association of the Study of African American Life and History PhilaMontco chapter. Dana King, president of both organizations, said they partnered to host the event to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the bombing and the 103rd anniversary of the Association of the Study of African American Life and History.

“Believe or not, there are a lot of people who were not aware there were five little girls in that church and that she was the only survivor,” King said. “About the last five years, we’ve had media coverage about her life beyond 1963.”

Birmingham was in 1963 one of the most racially discriminatory and segregated cities in the U.S. The 16th Street Baptist Church was a significant religious center for the city’s Black population and a meeting place for civil rights organizers like Martin Luther King Jr.

The bomb had been made and set by members of the local Ku Klux Klan.

More than 8,000 people — including many outraged white citizens — attended a funeral service for the girls. There, King delivered a euology: “These children — unoffending, innocent and beautiful — were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”

Outrage over the deaths of the four girls grew into support for the civil rights movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

The men responsible for the bombing wouldn’t be charged for more than a decade. Robert Chambliss, a retired auto mechanic, was indicted in 1977, tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton were indicted in 2000. Blanton was found guilty in 2001 and sentenced to four life prison terms, and Cherry was found guilty in 2002 and sentenced to four life prison terms.

Chambliss and Cherry died in prison.

When Blanton came up for parole in 2016, Collins Rudolph went to the hearing.

“She said what she had to say, other survivors said they said what they had to say,” said Greg Rudolph, Sarah Collins Rudolph’s husband. “In the end, he didn’t get paroled.”

Rudolph said he tells his wife: “At 12 years old, you went through the Vietnam War of our generation. What happened didn’t have to happen.”

Rudolph went on to say that no one knew what those girls could have become.

“They could have become nurses, teachers, judges — anything,” he said. “It didn’t have to happen.”

Collins Rudolph said she went through a “very bad time” after the bombing. Whenever she heard a loud noise, she would jump. But one day, her sister Dana invited her to church. The pastor called her up to the front and began talking with her about what she was going through.

She allowed him to pray for her and shortly after, she received salvation and ever since has been telling her story, crediting God for sparing her life.

Collins Rudolph is working on a memoir titled, “The Fifth Little Girl: Sole Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church.”

“My goal is to let people know how God helped me get through the struggle,” she said. “It was so traumatic and I went through a lot of things, and I couldn’t deal with life real good until God touched me and healed me.”

Many members of the audience were touched by Collins Rudolph’s story.

Glenn Ellis, who grew up with Collins Rudolph and her husband, said he gets choked up whenever he hears about the bombing and Collins Rudolph.

“One day you are going to be able to say to your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, ‘I was in the same room as Sarah Collins Rudolph,’ because of the significant history she represents for all of us,” he told the others.

Robert Washington, 83, said he had grown up in Birmingham and never realized there was a fifth girl hurt in the bombing. He said Sunday was a “historic day” for him because Collins Rudolph was finally being recognized.

Lauren Miller, 30, said she was brought to tears hearing Collins Rudolph’s story.

“The fact that she has not been listed in any textbooks is shameful,” Miller said. “We’ve heard about this story. We’ve read about this story. But to hear it from her mouth is an out of this world experience.”