The Sarah Collins Rudolph Justice Project

Sarah Collins Rudolph is the "Fifth Girl" who was in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, with four other girls when a bomb planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan exploded.  Four of the girls, including Sarah’s 14-year-old sister Addie Mae, were killed. Sarah survived with severe ongoing injuries, including the loss of an eye, that forever altered the course of her life. 

For my senior year project at the Maret School in Washington, D.C. I traveled through the Deep South for two weeks on the Civil Rights Trail and had the honor and privilege to meet with Sarah at her home.  I learned Sarah has not received justice for what happened to her.  Since then I have been organizing the Sarah Collins Rudolph Justice Project to help the cause of obtaining long-overdue justice. 

Sarah and her husband, George, have welcomed me into their home and their hearts like family since I met them.  They are truly kind people whom I am honored to know.  I want to enlist everyone who cares about civil rights and justice to contribute what they can to improve the quality of Sarah’s life, which has been tragically, permanently, and profoundly affected and damaged by this tragic event when she was twelve years old.
 
The marker of the grave of Sarah’s older sister, Addie Mae, says “Civil Rights Martyr."

So, too, is Sarah and the other girls who were in the basement of the church when the bomb exploded there.  Sarah Collins Rudolph is the beneficiary of this fundraiser.

This bombing was the single most deadly attack in the civil rights struggle in the South during this period.  The loss of four girls and the severe injuries to Sarah, who was hospitalized for an extended period and has endured great suffering, shocked the conscience of the nation and helped to galvanize support for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although there has been significant progress since that day in September 1963, Sarah is a reminder of the work that is still left to be done.  This work is in all of our hands now.

Below is a list of recent articles to learn more about Sarah.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/09/16/birmingham-church-bombing-restitution-alabama-kay-ivey/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/us/birmingham-church-bombing-restitution.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/us/church-bombing-1963-alabama-restitution-trnd/index.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/18/16th-street-baptist-church-bombing-victim-seeks-apology-compensation/3492453001/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/sarah-collins-rudolph