For those of us old enough to remember September 11, 2001, the date needs little explanation.
We remember where we were. We remember watching televisions in classrooms, offices, and living rooms. We remember phone calls to family members and the terrible uncertainty of those first hours. We remember a country that seemed to stop all at once.
But 25 years later, an entire generation knows September 11 only as history.
A new exhibit at the Museum of the Mississippi Delta in Greenwood is helping bridge that distance by telling the story of 9/11 through the experiences of three Mississippians who witnessed its aftermath—and, in one case, escaped the World Trade Center itself.
“Mississippi Bears Witness” brings together photographs, artifacts, newspaper headlines, and personal stories connected to one of the darkest days in American history. Written by Scott Barretta, the exhibit focuses on Lamar Lidell, Brian Barnes and Daniel Braiser, three men whose lives intersected with September 11 in very different ways.
Their stories bring something deeply personal to an event so enormous it can be hard to comprehend.
On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, another struck the Pentagon in Virginia, and a fourth crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.
Mississippi was hundreds of miles away, but Mississippians were part of what happened next.
Lamar Lidell led the Jackson Hotshots, a 25-member firefighting and emergency response team based in Pearl. Within days of the attacks, the team was called to New York.
Lidell’s uniform from that deployment is now part of the Greenwood exhibit, a tangible reminder that Mississippi men and women joined thousands of others who responded when the country needed them.
The Jackson Hotshots arrived in a city still reeling from unimaginable loss. Families were searching for loved ones. Rescue and recovery workers faced conditions unlike anything most had ever experienced. Amid the destruction, people from across the country arrived to help however they could.
Another part of the exhibit comes from Greenwood resident Brian Barnes.
Barnes had recently finished a job at a New York film studio when the attacks occurred. He and his roommate photographed what they saw in the aftermath, creating a visual record of those extraordinary days.
Those photographs are especially significant because they have largely remained private. Now, visitors in Greenwood can see those images and experience a piece of September 11 through the eyes of someone with ties to their own community.
Perhaps the most harrowing story belongs to Daniel Braiser.
Braiser was only three days into a new job at the World Trade Center when the second hijacked plane struck his tower. He made his way toward the ground floor and escaped before the building collapsed.
Three days into a new job.
It is a small detail, but one that makes the story feel startlingly human. September 11 began as an ordinary Tuesday. People went to work. Parents dropped children off. Coffee was poured. Meetings were scheduled. People walked into offices expecting to return home that evening.
Thousands never did.
That is part of what makes an exhibit like “Mississippi Bears Witness” important 25 years later.
History can become a collection of dates and numbers if we aren’t careful. September 11 can become four planes, two towers, and a death toll printed in a textbook.
But history is people.
It is a Mississippi firefighter standing amid the aftermath in New York. It is a Greenwood man lifting a camera and preserving what he saw. It is a young employee, three days into a new job, trying to get out of a building that had just been attacked.
And it is the millions of Americans who watched from hundreds of miles away and knew, even then, that life had changed.
For younger generations, September 11 belongs to a world before they were born. They cannot remember the silence of that day or the flags that appeared afterward on porches, businesses, overpasses, and front lawns across America.
Those memories now belong to the people who lived them—and that means we have a responsibility to preserve them.
The Museum of the Mississippi Delta is doing exactly that.
“Mississippi Bears Witness” reminds us that even the largest moments in history are made up of individual stories. Some of those stories lead all the way back home to Mississippi.
Twenty-five years later, we remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost. We remember the first responders who ran toward danger. We remember those who came afterward to search, recover, comfort, and help.
And through three Mississippi stories preserved in Greenwood, another generation can understand why we promised all those years ago that we would never forget.
