The Fifth Girl: Sarah Collins Rudolph
Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
I can see (see so much) so much (see so much)
What the (the Lord my God has done for me)
I can see (see so much) so much (see so much)
What the Lord (the Lord my God has done for me)
I can see (see so much) so much (see so much)
What the Lord (the Lord my God has done for me)
You know he brought me (well from a mighty, a mighty long way)
— I Can See So Much by the Rev. Cleophus Robinson
I can see (see so much) so much (see so much)
What the (the Lord my God has done for me)
I can see (see so much) so much (see so much)
What the Lord (the Lord my God has done for me)
I can see (see so much) so much (see so much)
What the Lord (the Lord my God has done for me)
You know he brought me (well from a mighty, a mighty long way)
— I Can See So Much by the Rev. Cleophus Robinson
Sarah Collins Rudolph
Sarah Collins Rudolph has seen so much. Maybe too much.
The surviving little Black girl from the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham carries the effects of that horrific blast. Her visible scars have healed, but the invisible scars remain.
When the bomb, planted by white supremacists, exploded, the blast initially blinded her in both eyes. She has since regained vision in her left eye, and she wears a prosthetic in her right.
Perhaps the deepest scar is the one that doesn’t heal, the one left from the loss of her big sister Addie Mae Collins along with Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Rosamond Robertson.
How did she survive? How did she see her way through the murderous act that could have put her in her grave?
How did she survive? How did she see her way through the murderous act that could have put her in her grave?
“I know it had to have been God,” says Rudolph, author of The 5th Little Girl, Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (The Sarah Collins Rudolph Story). “When that bomb went off, I called His name, Jesus, because it scared me so bad. That was the loudest sound heard around the city of Birmingham. You could go anywhere and everybody will tell you they heard that bomb.”
The 12-year-old called Jesus. Then she called her sister.
“She didn’t answer,” the Forestdale, Ala., resident recalls. “I guess, I know they died instantly, were killed instantly, right after that bomb went off.”
Old-timers who were miles away say they remember hearing the explosion that rocked Birmingham, and the world.
Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, is a date that lives in infamy. Old-timers who were miles away say they remember hearing the explosion that rocked Birmingham, and the world.
The girls had been getting dressed in the basement bathroom of the church. Rudolph recalls Denise asking Addie to tie a sash on her dress.
“She came out of the stall and walked over to Addie, ’cause all the girls came out together,” she says. “Denise was in front of the girls. Addie was standing there by the couch, and she turned around and said, ‘Addie, tie my sash.’”
Addie reached out to tie the sash and the bomb went off.
“They didn’t have a chance,” Rudolph says. “They didn’t have a chance to even … That’s all that was said, ‘Addie, tie my sash,’ and, Boom! That’s when the bomb went off. I stood there, and I looked. I was watching Addie when she reached her hand out to tie it. All of us stood there and watched. She never did finish tying it. That’s when the bomb went off and I went blind.”
Rudolph holds a photo of herself taken as she lay in a hospital, blinded after the bomb blast.
She says that after the bombing, church member Samuel Rutledge told her that he brought her out of the wreckage. He had been in his Sunday school classroom when the blast erupted. He started to go down the stairs but discovered they had been blown away.
“He said, ‘All I could do was just jump down,’” Rudolph says. “He said when he looked into that crater, and he saw me just standing there, he came in and he picked me up and he brought me out.”
But with no disrespect to Rutledge, who has since passed away, Rudolph says it was God who brought her out of that ordeal and through the trials she has endured since.
The surviving little girl says she feels no guilt, no survivor’s remorse, because she lived and the other four didn’t.
“At the age of 12, you’d be thanking God for sparing your life, and that’s what I did,” she says. “It could have been five so I never did feel that way.”
In her living room, Sarah Collins Rudolph displays a memorial to her late sister, Addie Mae Collins, who died when white supremacists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
Rudolph receives flowers from one of the children at the Addie Mae Collins Educational Center in Harlem during a recent visit to New York City.
A minister told her that God saved her life.
“One of those beams was supposed to have fell on top of you, but God sent His angel to catch it,” she recalls him saying. “Ever since then, I know God spared me for a reason.”
The reason, she says, was to bear witness, to be a voice for those who were silenced.
“I go around and I tell the people about the bombing. I always give them my testimony and let them know that I was saved and God spared my life,” Rudolph says.
“I let them know what I went through. Like that old saying, ‘You got to go through a test to have a testimony.’ I went through the test.”
Sarah and George Rudolph
Rudolph’s husband, George, punctuates her story with an occasional “Amen.” They have both struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, she from the church bombing, and he from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
The racist attack on the church eventually sent Rudolph to alcohol and cigarettes for relief. She received no counseling, she says, “but I survived all that.”
They said, ‘You’re the lucky one because you lived.’ But I wasn’t lucky. It wasn’t luck. I was blessed.
The survivor says she’s not bitter, just sad because adults didn’t truly appreciate what she had been through. “It kind of hurt just to know that they didn’t pay any attention to me. They said, ‘You’re the lucky one because you lived.’ But I wasn’t lucky. It wasn’t luck. I was blessed.
“Out of all the stuff that I took, I didn’t really get any relief until I got my life changed. I got saved. I got baptized and God filled me with the Holy Ghost.
“After He did that, that’s I when I started talking about the bombing. I wouldn’t have been able to talk about it until God had saved me and I got sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit,” says Rudolph. “He gave me a voice to get out there and talk about it. I always put God in because He’s the one that brought me out. Men didn’t do that.”
She continues to use her voice in the book she penned.
Sarah and George Rudolph enjoy a visit with U.S. President Joe Biden in the White House Oval Office.
“I wrote the book so people can know what happened,” she says. “A lot of young people weren’t here when all that happened. Everybody needs to know when we came up, what we had to do during that time.”
The blast took more than her eye and her sister. It also took her ability to have children, and her comfort around her fellow children. “I just didn’t feel right no more,” she recalls. “I had one eye and I just didn’t feel right, growing up like that.”
But she didn’t lose heart.
“I knew I had to live,” Rudolph says. “I wasn’t going to commit suicide. I just had to live and take whatever came on.”
As Rudolph retells her story, she admits that it is not cathartic. It does not bring healing.
I just got to continue to talk about it. It’s just something that I was called to do . . . I don’t ever want those girls’ names to be forgotten.
“It opens up wounds,” she says. “But I just got to continue to talk about it. It’s just something that I was called to do. Like I say, I don’t ever want those girls’ names to be forgotten. (There are) so many people, young people today that don’t know about what happened here in the city of Birmingham in the 1960s.”
Nothing like that should ever happen again, Rudolph says, yet she is alarmed by the divisiveness, fear, and anger she sees in our society today.
“Right now, it looks like we’re going backwards,” she says. “There’s so much hatred in the world; racism has risen up again.”