dramatically? well, i think that the real importance historically of the bombing was that in a sense it woke up white america. it woke up northern whites in a way that they have not been sensitized to the civil rights movement before. that had happened years earlier in black america, but i don t think it penetrate white northern consciousness in the way that the murder of those four little girls on a sunday in birmingham did. we heard from sarah collins rudolph there in story, sister of one of the bombing victims. and she also lost her eye, as well. we heard from her earlier this week, she was interviewed and she was asked how much this country has moved forward. i want to play her response and then talk to you on the other side. i can still feel some of the hate, you know, leak people closing doors up in my face and
they were athree were 14 years old, and one 11. sarah, i would imagine quite the emotional day there today. st still more events to come? reporter: that s correct. one scheduled in 30 minutes. this is a crowd waiting to hear a community memorial service. eric holder is expected to speak at that. spoke a little bit about the emotions going on today. and it s very hard to put your finger on just one. this is bringing up a lot of feelings and old memories for a lot of people. some helping close the wounds of 50 years ago and some are just reopening those old wounds and bringing back things that people had managed to forget about. we talked to one of the survivors of the bombing earlier today, she was actually in the bathroom with the four girls that were killed. and she talked about how this
childhood. coming home one day from my grandparents s house, a bomb we felt a bomb go off, heard apan explosion. and my father put us back in the car and said i m going to police. and she said they probably set the bomb. there were 50 unsolved bombings in birmingham alone. so many in fact the city itself earned a nickname, folks started calling it bombing-ham. but it was the one that happened here on a sunday morning in september of 1963 that awakened a country and changed the movement. my sister janet had this little black purse. and we was running and catching it like, you know, like we were playing ball. and we laughed and played all the way to church. now in her early 60s, sarah collins rudolph will never forget that fun filled september stroll to 16th street baptist church.
was so emotionally difficult for her and yet important at the same time. because being here for her was showing her love and respect to those four girls who were killed. sarah, thank you. that bombing was not just a game changer in the civil rights movement. it also had a tremendous impact on children living there at the time. including former secretary of state condoleezza rice. it was like living in a parallel world. we didn t interact with whites. i didn t have white friends. condoleezza rice grew up in black and white birmingham. her city was the capital of an old segregated south fighting to stay alive. pie parents couldn t take me to have a hamburger at the woolworth s lunch counters but they had me convinced i could be president of the united states if i wanted to be. in an interview on politics nation, the former secretary of state recalled birmingham of her