![]() Sarah’s husband, George Rudolph, made a sweeping gesture with his hand across the living room of the couple’s two-bedroom brick ranch house in the Birmingham suburb of Forestdale. Someone gasped, and someone else murmured “Amen” before the audience began to clap loudly, then louder still. “Yes, I was still standing,” Rudolph said quietly. “You were still standing?” her interviewer asked. “When he looked in there, he seen me standing, just bleeding,” Rudolph recalled from the stage. The church deacon who rescued her later told her that he had jumped down into the bombed void in the basement before peering through the falling dust into the lounge, now a jumble of brick and concrete and glass. Beneath the stairs just outside the windows, more than a dozen sticks of dynamite lay bundled, a timer ticking down.Īddie Mae’s arms were reaching out in midair toward Denise when the explosion happened, Rudolph said. Addie and the other girls had gathered near the lounge’s large windows, sharing news of the first days of school, Sarah behind them at the wash basin, when Denise asked Addie to tie the sash on her dress. Soon, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson joined them in the lounge. The sisters ventured to the women’s lounge in the basement, and then Janie headed to her class upstairs while Sarah and Addie Mae waited in the lounge until their lesson let out. (AP)īy the time the Collins children arrived for church a couple weeks later, Sunday school had already started. The crater left by the Klan bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Janie had a new black purse, shaped like a small football with a zipper, and the three girls tossed it back and forth, giggling as they walked the mile or so from home to the stately brick house of worship at the corner of 16th Street and Sixth Avenue in downtown Birmingham. The oldest of them, Junie, took the bus to 16th Street Baptist Church early to prepare to play the piano and reminded Sarah, Addie Mae and their sister Janie to be on time for the annual Youth Day service. Rudolph and her sisters had arisen before dawn so their mother could press each girl’s hair for church and feed them all breakfast. Schwarz for The Washington Post) ‘Still standing’ Schwarz for The Washington Post) BOTTOM RIGHT: Hundreds of African Americans attended the Black History Month event. Schwarz for The Washington Post) BOTTOM LEFT: April Heard grows emotional listening to Rudolph describe what she lost as a 12-year-old in Birmingham. ![]() ![]() TOP: Sarah Collins Rudolph and her husband, George Rudolph, walk into Peace Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., for her to speak about her experience in the 1963 church bombing. ![]()
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