9/11 Grief and Memory Resonate Differently 25 Years Later

NEW YORK — When the planes crashed and the buildings fell on that sunny September morning 25 years ago, the shock waves of dismay and grief radiated through every part of the United States. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania — but the emotional aftermath touched communities in ways that continue to evolve a quarter century later.

A new analysis by AP News explores how the meaning of 9/11 has fragmented across different segments of American society. What the attacks and their aftermath have come to mean is not a single viewpoint shared by everyone, but rather a tapestry of grief and understanding shaped by factors both chronological and personal.

A Generational Divide Takes Shape

The mere passage of time means tens of millions of young Americans have been born since 2001. According to new data from the Pew Research Center, 10% of American adults today were born after the attacks and know about them only through what they have learned from others. Among those aged 18 to 24, 60% say they first learned about 9/11 in class or through schoolwork.

For this generation, 9/11 is history — something to study alongside Pearl Harbor or the Civil War. But for those who lived through it, the memories remain vivid. Pew’s survey of 5,166 U.S. adults found that 83% of those born before 2001 recall exactly where they were when they heard the news, including 93% of those who were 10 or older at the time.

“The same event, whether it’s a disaster or a shock or even the recovery process is completely different depending on your network,” says Daniel Aldrich, a professor at Northeastern University who studies communities and resilience.

Personal Grief, Different Expressions

Those networks can exist in a range of ways and layers: those who lost loved ones, those who spent months clearing rubble from ground zero, those who joined the military, and those from communities viewed with heightened suspicion after the attacks.

Different networks overlap in Jenna McPartland’s family. She was expecting her first child with her husband, Ariel Jacobs, who was killed at the World Trade Center. She gave birth days later to their son, Gabriel, whose life was irrevocably altered by an event he didn’t experience.

In the years since, McPartland remarried twice and had two younger sons with no biological tie to their older brother’s father. “My middle boy wrote his college entrance essay on being the child of a 9/11 family, but not being the 9/11 kid,” says McPartland, 52, a chef and restaurant owner in Fairfield, Connecticut. “They all acknowledge it in different ways, they feel it in different ways, they sense it in their lives in different ways.”

Policy Choices and Their Lasting Impact

Government decisions made after the attacks — the restructuring of agencies, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and foreign policy choices like the invasion of Afghanistan — have also shaped how different communities experienced and remember the event.

In 2002, the federal government implemented the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which required non-U.S. citizen males over 16 from 25 countries, almost all Muslim-majority, to register at ports of entry or immigration offices. Critics condemned it as racial and religious profiling.

“The idea that there’s this outside threat in the form of people who look like this or from particular countries really fueled the reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security and has continued to fuel the ways in which we’ve funded and contributed to the securitization of our immigration system and society more broadly,” says Jayesh Rathod, a professor at Georgetown Law.

The post-9/11 environment also saw the creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the lingering effects of suspicion fell on people of Muslim faith and those from Muslim-majority parts of the world — as well as on other communities, including Sikhs. Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Arizona gas station owner, was shot and killed four days after the attacks by an assailant who assumed he was Arab.

Muslim Americans: A Quarter Century of Change

A companion Pew Research Center report paints a complex picture of Muslim American life 25 years after 9/11. The Muslim population has grown from approximately 2.4 million in 2007 to about 5.5 million today, and the number of U.S. mosques has risen from roughly 1,200 in 2000 to nearly 2,800 in 2020.

Yet negative perceptions persist. In a Pew survey conducted this spring, 43% of U.S. adults said Muslims are less patriotic than other Americans, and 42% said Muslim Americans are having a negative impact on the country. The share of Americans who say Islam encourages violence more than other religions has risen to 51%, up from 25% in March 2002 — with the partisan gap widening dramatically: 76% of Republicans versus 29% of Democrats now hold that view.

The FBI’s annual tally of hate crimes against Muslims spiked to 481 in 2001, up from 28 the year before, and has never returned to pre-9/11 levels.

At the same time, Muslim Americans have achieved unprecedented political visibility. There are now four Muslim members of Congress, with a fifth about to join, compared with zero in 2001. And in New York City, where the twin towers fell, Zohran Mamdani was inaugurated this year as the city’s first Muslim mayor.

A New Generation Finds Its Own Frame of Reference

For Vida Lashgari, 21, who was raised in California with a Mexican mother and Persian father, 9/11 is something she learned about rather than experienced. She says she “grew up learning about how 9/11 particularly impacted Middle Easterners, Sikhs, brown people as a whole and how that kind of changed their everyday life.”

But another seismic event gave Lashgari and others in her generation a way to understand what it means to have one’s world change overnight: the COVID-19 pandemic. “The pandemic shook up so many lives, especially in my generation who had not experienced some sort of drastic change like that,” she says. “COVID was, to this day, the closest I’ve ever felt to my world changing overnight and knowing I had no control over it.”

Amy Sodaro, a sociology professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College who studies memorials and museums, notes that other geopolitical events and shifts have changed how 9/11 is viewed in historical memory — both collectively and individually. “These other geopolitical events and changes to our world have changed the face of 9/11 in historical memory at the collective level — and I think also at the level of individuals,” she says.

Remembrance Through Art and Service

As the nation prepares to mark the solemn anniversary, communities across New York are finding new ways to honor the dead. Artist Phil Buehler, who photographed more than 500 missing posters in the days after 9/11, has put 144 of those haunting images on display for the first time at Most Holy Trinity – St Mary’s church in Brooklyn in an exhibition called “Countenance: The 9/11 Missing Posters,” as The Guardian reports.

“Bringing these faces into this church is more than an art exhibition,” said Friar Rick Riccioli, the church’s pastor. “It is an act of kinship, an act of remembrance, and, for us, an act of prayer.”

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and council members gathered at the 9/11 Memorial this week to announce $1 million in funding for free field trips to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum for city students, with a focus on eighth graders, as the NYC Council announced. “It is more important than ever that a new generation of New Yorkers understands what happened that day and carries forward the stories of those we lost,” Menin said.

What to Watch For

As the 25th anniversary ceremony approaches at Ground Zero on Friday, questions about how the nation remembers — and who gets to participate in that remembrance — continue to surface. Mayor Mamdani has faced a petition drive with more than 98,000 signatures seeking to bar him from the ceremony, as The Mary Sue reported. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Governor George Pataki have both called for him to skip the event.

Mamdani has said he will attend, declaring: “I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders, forever impacted by that horrific terror attack, by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration.” He has also signed executive orders designating September 11 as an official Day of Remembrance and Service in the city.

Supporters, including Elizabeth Miller of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose father was killed in the attacks, argue the mayor should be allowed to attend. “Mayor Mamdani has assured 9/11 families that he wants to be there to honor our loved ones, and I think he should be allowed to do that,” Miller said.

The ceremonies on Friday will include the reading of the names of the 2,983 men, women, and children killed in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, followed by moments of silence. Communities across New York State will hold tributes throughout September, as detailed by the Democrat and Chronicle.

Twenty-five years on, the question of what 9/11 means — and to whom — remains as layered and complex as the nation itself. As Phil Buehler reflected on the fleeting unity that briefly united Americans after the attacks: “That was an important moment and maybe the 25th anniversary will remind us of some of that.”