September 12 Illinois History Minute

It’s September 12th, and on this day in 2001, Americans were still trying to make sense of the September 11th attacks that used hijacked airplanes to attack the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, and kill nearly three-thousand people, including nine from Illinois. The headline on the Chicago Tribune’s front page read “Our Nation Saw Evil”, quoting President George W. Bush. The Champaign News-Gazette spoke to local Muslims who condemned the attacks, and worried that they would be targeted in response. And on WILL’s talk show Focus 580, Dan Diner (DEEN-er), a visiting expert on Jewish history from the University of Leipzig, who had expected to talk about other topics, said the destruction of the twin towers would change the world’s view of the U-S as a country relatively untouched by Old World conflicts.