BLACK STATE ARCHIVES RESEARCH CENTER AND MUSEUM
LOCATED IN THE JAMES H. WILSON BUILDING ON THE CAMPUS OF ALABAMA A & M UNIVERSITY
HOSTS September 11 and Beyond Photographic Exhibition By Patrick Witty
th
Exhibition on loan from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Thru October 31, 2007 Viewing Hours: Monday thru Friday 9:30 a.m. 4:30 p.m. Group and Weekend Tours by appointment only
A SCREAM WOKE ME. My first thoughts were that someone had fallen off the roof. I lived on the top floor of a fivestory building on the Lower East Side of New York City, about a mile from the World Trade Center. As I was putting on my clothes to see what happened, the phone rang. It was a friend, yelling, out of breath, into the phone, Get on the roof, a plane hit the World Trade Center. I grabbed my camera and ran up one flight of stairs to the roof. Black smoke and fire was billowing out of the towers. The second plane had just struck, indicating to us all that this was no accident. I lifted my camera and shot one color photograph before south. heading Papers were streaming to the ground, chunks of buildings, closer then, no, it's bodies. Three blocks from the towers, I turned to photograph a crowd of people, staring, when I heard a crack behind me and instantly turned to face the thunder of a 110story building crumbling to the ground. Then screaming, running, and chaos. The cloud approached. It seemed a mile high and a mile wide, and was traveling towards everyone. I ceased to think about photographs at that point, and focused on survival. After emerging from the cloud, I photographed a woman who had a huge smile, happy as Christmas morning, cover...