3 questions for Sarah Collins Rudolph, '5th Little Girl' in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing 60 years ago

Sixty years after some members of the Ku Klux Klan planted more than a dozen sticks of dynamite and bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., violently bringing hate-fueled terror to a majority Black city by killing four young Black girls, a survivor of the tragedy continues to fight for the restitution she says she deserves.

Sarah Collins Rudolph, 71, who lost a sister and one of her eyes in the blast, still has shards of glass in her body from the incident. She was in the bathroom with the other four girls when the bomb went off. After seeing the families of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., receive tens of millions of dollars in compensation for their lost loved ones, Rudolph, who became known as the “Fifth Little Girl,” cannot understand why the state of Alabama hasn’t done the same for her. Rudolph has persistently argued that the rhetoric of state leaders, including then-Gov. George Wallace, encouraged the 1963 bombing.

“They owe me,” Rudolph told Yahoo News.

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In 2020, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued Rudolph an apology for “untold pain and suffering” from the incident, but declined to pay restitution without legislative involvement. And in the last three years there has been no significant movement on the issue. But restitution is something historians say is necessary to right a devastating wrong, no matter how complex.

“Rudolph’s missing eye is an absence made visible,” Duke University historian Adriane Lentz-Smith told Yahoo News. “So often we're talking about something that's not there, but we're talking about it in more figurative or metaphorical language. I think it's necessary, but difficult, to determine how to compensate, apologize and atone for the kinds of loss that linger over a lifetime.”

“Yet we could do everything from the cost of the doctor care to something a little less concrete but still consequential,” Lentz-Smith added. “What were the opportunities that she could not pursue or embrace because she lost her eye?”

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The bombing, and subsequent outrage, ultimately helped fuel the civil rights movement.

The blast killed Denise McNair, 11, and three 14-year-olds: Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, who was Rudolph’s sister. Rudolph’s husband, George, called what his wife experienced “terrorism,” adding that she continues to deal with PTSD from the incident.

He also said she has found a way to come to peace with the entire experience.

“Sarah had to forgive those Klansmen that did that to her,” George Rudolph told Yahoo News. “She forgave them.”

Yahoo News spoke to Sarah Collins Rudolph about why she continues to push for restitution 60 years later. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

1. What does reparations look like to you, and what would it mean?

Restitution would make things better in my life. The state owes me. George Wallace was governor, and he promoted racism at that time. Even Bull Conner, the commissioner of public safety for the city of Birmingham, who put all the dogs on people and fire hoses on people, is responsible for the racism. I think I’m owed in the millions. They wanted to give me a Congressional Medal of Honor, but I didn’t want that. I want them to pay me my restitution.

2. Most people focus on the four young girls who died in the bombing, but there were 22 people injured, including yourself. How has your life been transformed?

I’ve still been moving around and doing things that I’ve had to do, but I’ve just been waiting on some kind of payback because it’s long overdue. I wasn’t able to get the education I wanted to be a nurse. Instead, I worked at Foundry thrift store. I also wanted to go to the Army, but they told me that a person with one eye couldn’t even serve in the Army. So I didn’t do that. I couldn’t even have any children because the doctor told me I had lead in my stomach.

3. When you think about the last 60 years — progress with the election of the first Black president but also ongoing racism and backlash against movements like Black Lives Matter — how do you make sense of it?

It seemed like things were getting better, but they’re going back. We keep seeing things happen to Black people that shouldn’t happen, like George Floyd. We see people going into church and getting shot and killed. I just want people to know that the Civil Rights Bill was passed in 1964 after those girls were killed, and it’s time for people to realize it hasn’t always been like this. It was after they saw the dogs on TV attacking Black people and water hoses being used on them that President Johnson signed it because of what was happening in the state of Alabama.