The Fifth Child Burning presents the material trauma of the remains of a house fire that consumed a child. Lonnie B. Holley describes the event: “A little girl in Birmingham burned to death in her own house ... Her parents was not home. They had given her luxuries but not their own time.” Holley’s title links this unidentified girl to the four young girls killed in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, an act of domestic terrorism and catalyst for the civil rights movement. Holley, as well as Thornton Dial, are among the many artists who entered the collection through partial gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation (SGDF), an organization devoted to promoting the work of African American artists, mostly self-trained, from the American South in museum collections.