The “Fifth Little Girl”: Sarah Collins and the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

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By Marlena Ryan

During the Civil Rights Era, the state of Alabama was very resistant to integration. Former Governor George Wallace even made this interesting statement during his inauguration speech in 1963: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. But despite such public support for segregation, the civil rights movement was not backing down. During the first week of May 1963, The Children’s Crusade saw over 1,000 students between ages of 8-18, leave school, meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church and march from there for desegregation.

Thousands of children were arrested. Police were also ordered to spray the children with water hoses that put out 100 pounds of water pressure. They also threatened the children with police dogs and use their batons against them. Governor Wallace made this public statement on May 8, 1963 which was recorded by The New York Times: “The President [John F. Kennedy] wants us to surrender this state to Martin Luther King and his group of pro-Communists who have instituted these demonstrations.”

Four months later, on the morning of September 15, 1963, 12-year-old Sarah Collins along with her 14-year-old sister Addie Mae Collins, their sisters Junie and Janie, and their mother got ready to attend church service at the 16th Street Birmingham Baptist Church. The church was not only a place for worship but was also the headquarters for many civil rights activities and meetings were also held there by civil rights leaders.

In an act of domestic terror, four Ku Klux Klan members placed sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device below the steps of the 16th Street Birmingham Baptist Church. At just before 11 A.M., the dynamite exploded while children at the church were changing into their choir robes. The blast killed four girls: 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, 14-year-old Carole Robertson, 14-year-old Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Carol Denise McNair. Many church members were also injured, including Addie Mae’s 12-year-old sister Sarah Collins who was blinded in her right eye by the explosion. The blast also blew a 7-foot hole in the rear wall of the church, and cars which had been parked nearby were blown 4 feet away by the explosion.

TIME Magazine released an article written September 27, 1963. It described the events of the church bombing with a number of statements such as these: “Rescue workers found a seven-foot pyramid of bricks where once the girls’ bathroom stood. On top was a child’s white lace choir robe. A civil defense captain lifted the hem of the robe. ‘Oh, my God,’ he cried. ‘Don’t look!’ Beneath lay the mangled body of a Negro girl. Barehanded, the workers dug deeper into the rubble — until four bodies had been uncovered. The head and shoulder of one child had been completely blown off. A Negro minister [said]: ‘Go home and pray for the men who did this evil deed. We must have love in our hearts for these men.’ But a Negro boy screamed, ‘We give love — and we get this!’ And another youth yelled: ‘Love ’em? Love ’em? We hate ’em!’ A man wept: ‘My grandbaby was one of those killed! Eleven years old! I helped pull the rocks off her! You know how I feel? I feel like blowing the whole town up! The Birmingham police department’s six-wheeled riot tank thumped onto the scene and cops began firing shotguns over the heads of the crowd while Negroes pelted them with rocks. Later, Negro youths began stoning passing white cars. The police ordered them to stop. One boy, Johnny Robinson, 16, ran, and a cop killed him with a blast of buckshot. That made five dead and 17 injured in the bomb blast.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. sent a telegram to Governor Wallace after the attack which simply read: “The blood of our little children is on your hands.” Over 8,000 mourners attended the funerals for the girls at Reverend John Porter’s Sixth Avenue Baptist Church. Sarah Collins was unable to attend her sister’s funeral because she was still recovering in the hospital from her injuries. Ms. Collins would spend approximately two months in the hospital and endure surgery to receive a prosthetic eye. She wept daily over her injuries and over the loss of her sister, Addie Mae.

In 1965, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was notified that four known Klansmen were suspected of being behind the 16th Street Baptist bombing: 27 year-old Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr., 47 year-old Herman Frank Cash, 61 year-old Robert Edward Chambliss, and 35 year-old Bobby Frank Cherry. Believing that the chances the men would be convicted were “remote”, the investigation was closed with no charges filed by Hoover in 1968. But the Alabama attorney general Bill Baxley would reopen the case in 1971. Robert Edward Chambliss was the only suspect to be charged. He was photographed smiling after his arrest for murder. Chambliss was convicted in 1977 of first-degree murder. He died in prison in 1985, at the age of 81, still proclaiming his innocence.

Ten years after the death of Robert Chambliss, the FBI reopened the case and arrested Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry charging both with four counts of murder in the first degree. Both men would be tired separately and both were found guilty. The men were each given life sentences. Cherry died in prison in 2004 at the age of 74. Blanton died June 26, 2020 in prison at the age of 82. Herman Frank Cash, the fourth suspect, was never charged with a crime, and he maintained his innocence. Cash died in 1994 in Alabama.

Sarah Collins, known today as Sarah Collins Rudolph, has spent the decades since the bombing and the death of her older sister dealing with physical and emotional pain. She lost her right eye, and glass fragments remain in her body from the bombing. She also testified against Bobby Frank Cherry, the Klansmen who was convicted for the murders of the four girls in the church bombing. Ms. Collins Rudolph has requested an apology and restitution from the state of Alabama through a lawyer for her pain, arguing that it was former Governor George Wallace’s “racist rhetoric” that motivated the violence she had to endure.

On September 30, 2020, 57 years after the church bombing, Governor Kay Ivey wrote a letter of apology to Sarah Collins Rudolph who is now 69 years-old, on behalf of the state of Alabama. In the letter, which has been printed by the Washington Post, Governor Ivey notes that since the State of Alabama did not put the bomb at the church site: “For this and other reasons, many would question whether the State can be held legally responsible for what happened at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church so long ago.” Governor Ivey goes on to write: “There should be no question that Ms. Collins Rudolph and the families of those who perished-including Ms. Collins Rudolph’s sister Addie Mae, as well as Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carole Denice McNair-suffered an egregious injustice that has yielded untold pain and suffering over the ensuing decades. For that, they most certainly deserve a heartfelt apology-an apology that I extend today without hesitation or reservation.”

Last year, on September 19, 2019, a memorial to the 16th Street Baptist church was unveiled at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama. It features a bronze and steel sculpture of four girls at a bench surrounded by doves, representing the four girls whose lives were lost on September 15, 1963. But Sarah Collins Rudolph is not thrilled with the sculpture. She says it does not depict the way it was that day in 1963, and no one thought to ask her, the only living witness, who was there that day in the ladies’ lounge with the other girls.

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