25 years after 9/11, we remember the stories of Black victims, survivors and their loved ones

From the Marcy Borders to a Flight 93 pilot and three 11-year-old students, their lives reveal the breadth of Black experiences on Sept. 11, 2001.

She was completely gray. Her hair, face, clothes, even the purse she had tucked beneath her arm, were all covered in the dust and debris that swallowed Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001, after the World Trade Center began to fall. 

A photographer, Stan Honda, hiding out in a nearby shop, did what most with a camera would do when the woman sought refuge in the same shop. He snapped a photo of the “dust lady,” freezing her in time, standing there, looking poised, while still in obvious shock, on the checkered linoleum floor, in what would become one of the most famous images from the 9/11 attacks. 

Her name was Marcy Borders, and she was a Black woman from New Jersey who was just weeks into a new job at Bank of America on the 81st floor of the north tower when the first plane struck. Borders, who ran despite her supervisor’s explicit orders to stay put, survived.

The day ended with roughly 3,000 people losing their lives throughout New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as well as thousands of others who escaped, like Borders. Among them were Black Americans whose experiences stretch across every corner of the attacks, from first responders, including 12 Black firefighters who perished saving lives, to workers running from the collapsing towers, to a young mother pulled barely alive from the Pentagon, to a Black pilot fighting for control of Flight 93, to three 11-year-old Black children headed west on the field trip of a lifetime.

As we continue to look back 25 years later, here are some of their stories.

Marcy Borders

After stumbling into history that day, Borders spent years struggling with the aftereffects, including depression, addiction, and alcoholism, and at one point losing custody of her two children. However, after attending rehab in 2011, she regained custody and was starting to regain control of her life when she was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2014, something she long attributed to having been on Ground Zero during that day. 

Borders succumbed to the cancer in 2015, but her legacy and the fight she fought from the moment the plane struck her building to her last breath is celebrated by her family. Her daughter, Noelle, told the New York Post her mother “fought an amazing battle”.

“Not only is she the ‘Dust Lady’ but she is my hero, and she will forever live through me,” she said.

LeRoy W. Homer Jr.

Homer Jr. was the first officer and co-pilot aboard United Airlines Flight 93, flying alongside Capt. Jason Dahl when hijackers stormed it. After passengers and crew realized the country was under some kind of coordinated attack and fought back, the hijackers crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, before reaching what investigators believe was their intended target, the U.S. Capitol.

Homer left behind his wife, Melodie, and their 10-month-old daughter, Laurel. In the years since, Melodie founded the LeRoy W. Homer Jr. Foundation, which provides flight scholarships to young people pursuing careers as professional pilots. 

In Netflix’s “Turning Point: Generation 9/11,” Laurel reflected on the complicated legacy left behind for the families of those aboard Flight 93. 

“Obviously, I’m grateful that more devastation wasn’t caused, but at the same time, I still lost him,” she said. “I know he was a hero, but I wish he didn’t have to be.”

Asia Cottom, Bernard Brown, and Rodney Dickens

Cottom, Brown, and Dickens were just three 11-year-old Washington, DC public school children selected for a special National Geographic-sponsored trip to Santa Barbara, California, to learn about ocean exploration at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Traveling with them were teachers Sarah Clark, James DeBeuneure, and Hilda Taylor, who boarded American Airlines Flight 77 with them that morning before hijackers took control of the plane and crashed it into the Pentagon, killing everyone aboard.

Twenty-five years later, all three children would be 36 years old. 

Racquel Kelley

Kelley was 32, six months postpartum, and working as a civilian computer specialist at the Pentagon, programming laptops on the first floor, when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building roughly 700 feet from her desk. She was knocked unconscious, severely burned, and struggling to breathe before becoming the only civilian medevacced from the Pentagon that day.

The young mother survived, eventually returned to work for the Defense Department, and raised the baby boy she had been so desperate to get home to, Antonio. Earlier this year, after 33 years, and still living with the PTSD and physical impact of her injuries, she finally retired. And twenty-five years after a morning that nearly ended her life, she continues to tell her story.