When Sarah Collins Rudolph was 12 years old, she was getting ready for the Sunday service in the basement of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Down there also were her sister, 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, and their friends Denise McNair, Carole Roberts — both 14 — and Cynthia Wesley, 11.
Rudolph remembers her sister asking for help to tie her sash just before a bomb detonated on that fateful day in 1963.
“All of a sudden ‘boom.’ The bomb went off,” she said. “All of a sudden, I hear someone holler, ‘Somebody bombed the 16th Street church.’ His voice was so clear it sounded like he was in there with us.”
Rudolph woke up in the hospital. Shattered glass from the blast had been lodged in her eye and she required surgery. Afterward, her mom told her what had happened at the church.
“She told me that all the girls that were down there with me (were) killed, and I was the only survivor,” Rudolph told more than 70 gathered Tuesday to hear her story at Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church west of Columbus. “I just didn’t understand. Like I said, I was 12 years old when it happened to me. I just cried, cried and cried. I really couldn’t cry like I wanted to because glass was all in my eye.”
Rudolph recalled the intense discrimination Black people faced in segregated Birmingham, nicknamed Bomingham at the time due to the amount of dynamite detonated in the city. During the 1960s, the 16th Street Baptist Church served as a headquarters for mass civil rights meetings and rallies. Rudolph said her mother regularly attended the meetings.
For years, Rudolph struggled with her injuries, survivor’s guilt and resentment toward the Ku Klux Klan members who organized the bombing. In 1977, she testified for the prosecution in the trial of one perpetrator, Robert Chambliss.
Chambliss was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, in part due to Rudolph’s testimony. When the case was reopened in the 1990s, Bobby Frank Cherry and Herman Frank Cash also received life sentences. The fourth man involved in the bombing, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 before he could be convicted.
Rudolph co-authored the 2020 book “The 5th Little Girl: Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing” as a way to tell her story and preserve the legacy of the bombing. She travels throughout the country to share her story and encourage young people to be more involved in understanding and remembering the civil rights movement.
She spoke in Columbus as part of Oak Grove’s “Tuesdays at the Grove” speaker series.
Rudolph said she struggled with drugs and alcohol for years due to the trauma inflicted by the four men, who lived long lives before their convictions. She ultimately found comfort through her relationship with God.
“I thank God for putting it in my heart to go ahead and forgive them,” she said. “Now I’ve been going all around the United States just telling people to put their trust in Jesus.”
Rudolph said she believes it is important for young people today to hear her story since they have no way of knowing how bad segregation was at the time.
Middle-schooler Adrianne Craddieth, who attended the talk, said she learned a lot from hearing Rudolph’s firsthand experience.
“I heard about the Birmingham bombing, but not in school,” she said. “They didn’t ever go into depth. Maybe just during Black History Month, but in regular history class, we learn about other stuff.”
For Craddieth, not learning about major stories from the civil rights movement makes her feel like history is moving backward.
“It just feels like we’re going back in time,” she said. “We read about it, but it doesn’t hit like when you see it and when somebody else tells (their story).”
Annette Davis, who was born in 1956, said hearing Rudolph’s story gave her chills.
“To hear her say all of this because she knew what we went through and for her to even come here to tell us, it was tearful to me,” Davis said. “But I’m glad because God is so good. He made all of us in all colors. We just got away from that, but in his eyesight, all of us are the same.”
Mayor Keith Gaskin presented Rudolph with the first Columbus Citizenship Award of 2024 on Monday.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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