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Nearly 50 years ago, white supremacists bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls. It was an act of terror that shocked the country and propelled Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington announced plans to pursue a Congressional Gold Medal for the girls. That's the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow. But as Tanya Ott reports from member station WBHM, there is another victim of the bombing who feels left behind.
TANYA OTT, BYLINE: In Birmingham these days, signs of 1963 are everywhere. The city is commemorating the events of that year - the children who marched until police turned fire hoses and dogs on them, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham jail, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. When Mayor William Bell publicly announced the effort, he drew special attention to the attack.
MAYOR WILLIAM BELL: At the time that the bombing took place in September of 1963, the four little girls were brought here.
OTT: Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, they are the subject of books, movies and documentaries, many of which include a footnote indicating a fifth girl survived the attack. That girl - now 62 years old - lives in a modest ranch-style house just north of Birmingham. She remembers the bombing like it was yesterday.
SARAH COLLINS RUDOLPH: I was standing there, just standing there bleeding, and somebody came, and they just picked me up and took me out through the hole and put me in a ambulance.
OTT: Sarah Collins Rudolph was just 12, the younger sister of Addie Mae, who died in the blast. Rudolph was sprayed with glass. She lost an eye. She was hospitalized months and then, she says, told to put it behind her. But she can't.
RUDOLPH: I still shake. I still jump when I hear loud sounds. Every day, I think about it, just looking in the mirror and seeing still the scars, you know, on my face. I'm reminded of it every day.
OTT: The scars are physical, mental and financial - medical bills that have mounted over the years as she worked in factories and cleaning houses, mostly without health insurance. She has insurance now through her husband George, but there are still out-of-pocket medical expenses. In October, Rudolph went before the Birmingham City Council to ask for help. Her husband says the city ignored her.
GEORGE RUDOLPH: If you look back at the people in the Trade Towers, each one of those victims got paid. The families got, you know, they got paid. But my wife, she didn't get anything. She should be compensated.
OTT: Birmingham Mayor William Bell says he's not insensitive. He appreciates the trauma Sarah Rudolph has been through, but he says the city cannot just write her a check.
BELL: When you say reparation, that puts a whole different legal terminology in place that we're not capable nor are we legally obligated to do.
OTT: Dorothy Inman-Johnson knows the dilemma from both sides. As a teenager, she participated in the children's marches in Birmingham. As an adult, she became the first black female mayor of Tallahassee, Florida.
DOROTHY INMAN-JOHNSON: But the city could have taken the lead in creating some kind of foundation or fund that other people could contribute to that would have helped her in some way. It would have been an important statement.
OTT: But that hasn't happened, and it doesn't seem like it will. Over the past 50 years, Sarah Collins Rudolph has been left out of many events commemorating the tragedy at 16th Street Baptist Church. Even many longtime Birmingham residents didn't know her story until recently. As the eyes of the world are trained on Birmingham this year, Rudolph says she'll watch from the comfort of her home. It's all she feels up to, after 50 years forgotten.
For NPR News, I'm Tanya Ott in Birmingham, Alabama.