Patriot Day & 9/11 Commemoration

United States Public Law (PDF) designates September 11 of each year as Patriot Day.

9/11 Commemoration Resources

National September 11 Memorial and Museum

The National September 11 Memorial is a tribute to those killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The Memorial provides K-12 resources, educational programs, and materials concerning the events of September 11, the historical context of the attacks, and the post-9/11 world.

National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial

The Pentagon Memorial Fund is dedicated to developing educational resources and outreach opportunities to help visitors understand the historic significance of the site and the events that occurred on September 11, 2001.

U.S. National Park Service's Flight 93 National Memorial

Flight 93 National Memorial was established at the September 11, 2001, crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, to honor the passengers and crew of Flight 93. The Memorial continues to provide teaching resources and other instructional materials.

Library of Congress Exhibition: Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions

The Library of Congress has acquired extensive collection of original material dedicated to September 11. The September 11 Digital Archive contains 150,000 digital items that are available for viewing.

Essential Context

The 9/11 Commission Report — National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
The primary public record: timeline, plot, intelligence failures, and the nature of the enemy.

9/11 Primer and lesson plans — National September 11 Memorial & Museum
Age-banded modules, timelines, oral histories.

Flight 93 National Memorial teaching resources — National Park Service

Pentagon Memorial education

On Heroism & Character

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 — Garrett M. Graff
Voices of passengers, first responders, officials, and families. Best single narrative of the day itself.

The Red Bandanna — Tom Rinaldi (also a young-readers edition)
Welles Crowther in the South Tower: character, vocation, and choice under fire. Excellent for civics and character.

The Day the World Came to Town — Jim DeFede
Gander, Newfoundland: ordinary people answering catastrophe with hospitality.

Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey — Maira Kalman
Picture book for early grades; the Museum already uses it.

14 Cows for America — Carmen Agra Deedy
Maasai gift after 9/11; compassion without flattening the crime.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 — Lawrence Wright
Pulitzer-winning history from Sayyid Qutb through bin Laden and Zawahiri. The book that still best explains the ideology.

Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror — Mary Habeck
Short, precise map of Wahhabi–Qutbist–jihadist thought in the terrorists’ own terms.

Great Books

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution (with Bill of Rights)

Federalist Nos. 10 and 51 — Madison
Faction, virtue, and institutions that restrain both mob and tyrant.

Washington’s Farewell Address
Unity, religion and morality, and wariness of foreign passions.

Lincoln, Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural
A nation conceived in liberty, and charity without self-erasure.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books I–II and VIII–IX (courage, justice, friendship)

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War — Pericles’ Funeral Oration and the Melian Dialogue
What a free city says it is, and what happens when power discards justice.

Augustine, City of God, Book XIX
Peace, justice, and the limit of earthly politics.

Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chs. 2–9
Natural rights, consent, and the purpose of government.

Mill, On Liberty, ch. 2 (“Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion”)
Why a free society cannot outsource truth to intimidation.

Solzhenitsyn, Harvard Address (1978), “A World Split Apart”
A warning against Western self-hatred and spiritual exhaustion—directly useful against anti-Western curricula.