‘The fifth girl,’ 16th Street Baptist Church bombing survivor reflects on 60 years

Published 9:30 am Wednesday, September 13, 2023

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

It’s just one of the songs children at 16th Street Baptist Church were planning to sing on youth day at the church Sept. 15, 1963.

Sarah Collins Rudolph reflected on that day in a CNHI interview Aug. 30 from her Birmingham home, where she’s remained since the tragedy that claimed the lives of her sister, Addie Mae Collins, and three other girls.

“We walked to church that morning, my sister Janie, Addie and I. And we walked a good ways, so we came into the ladies lounge to freshen up,” she said.

Janie went upstairs to her class, while Sarah and Addie stayed behind in the ladies lounge.

That’s when 14-year-olds Denise McNair and Carole Robertson, and 11-year-old Cynthia Wesley came into the basement ladies lounge just before 10:30 a.m.

Denise walked over to Addie, 14, and asked her to tie the sash on her dress.

“The time (Addie) reached her hand out, the bomb went off and all I could do was holler, ‘Jesus,’” Collins Rudolph recalled. “I didn’t know what what had happened because I was blinded from the debris. I called out Addie’s name about three times but she didn’t answer so I thought they had ran out and left me in there by myself.”

Bombs had exploded outside on the steps of the basement ladies lounge.

Collins Rudolph was rescued from the rubble and taken to the hospital for surgery on her eyes. She was hopeful that Addie had survived, but after leaving surgery, her mother told her that Addie and the other girls died from the explosion.

Nearly 14 years later, one of four bombing suspects, named by the FBI, was convicted. It wasn’t until more than 40 years later, in 2000, that two other suspects were indicted and later convicted. The fourth suspect died in 1994. All of the suspects in the racially-motivated bombing were reportedly affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.

“Those girls didn’t have to be killed like that. We were there to praise God and learn a lesson about love, and it was just some hateful, devilish people out there that hated us because of our color,” Collins Rudolph said. “I don’t understand why they hate us so much when we went through slavery. What more do they want from us?”

While Collins Rudolph, often called “the fifth girl,” said she remains angry about the delay in prosecuting the men responsible for the bombing, she said she hopes the men repented before their deaths.

“It made me angry because they didn’t have to wait 93 years to bring them to court, because they knew who did it,” she said. “I really believe that if they had done it earlier while the Ku Klux Klan was rising they would have gotten off. But it was a blessing that they finally went to trial.”