Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Wednesday extended a “sincere, heartfelt apology” to a survivor of the 1963 Klan bombing of a Black church in Birmingham — an act that shocked the nation and helped speed passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act.

The bombing on Sept. 15, 1963 “was one of the darkest days in Alabama’s history,” Ivey (R) wrote in a letter to attorneys for Sarah Collins Rudolph, who is now 69. “If any good could come from something so bad and evil, it was the momentum that was created to spur many profound and long-overdue changes — changes that were not only beneficial for our state but also the entire nation.”

Rudolph was 12 and permanently blinded in one eye by shards of glass when the dynamite blasted through the ladies lounge in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church. 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.

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