5th Girl in Birmingham 1963 Church Bombing seeks restitution

 The Washington Post reports a girl injured in 1963 when a KKK-planted bomb went off next to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham:

"Fifty-seven years after the Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., murdering four Black girls and stunning the nation, a victim of the notorious hate crime sought a public apology and compensation from the state of Alabama on Tuesday.

Sarah Collins Rudolph, now 69, was 12 and permanently blinded in one eye by shards of glass when dynamite blasted through the ladies lounge in the church basement on the morning of Sept. 15, 1963. The explosion killed Rudolph’s 14-year-old sister, Addie Mae Collins, and their friends, Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14. The Birmingham church bombing became a galvanizing event in the civil rights movement.

“Ms. Collins Rudolph simply wanted to do what so many other little girls across Alabama were doing — attend a church service,” reads the letter from Rudolph’s attorneys, who are working pro bono, to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R). “But instead of gaining the solace and celebration of prayer, the church was bombed by those affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan and our client lost her sister, her right eye, her childhood, and in ways she could never know then as a 12-year old girl, a lifetime’s worth of opportunities and dreams.”

                                                                                   (From a Washington Post story)