On August 28, 2001, Memphis teenagers received a new issue of Teen Appeal. Nothing about that date seemed historic.
The newspaper was produced through the University of Memphis Journalism Department and The Commercial Appeal and gave young Memphians a place to write about the subjects that mattered to them.
School. Entertainment. Relationships. Music. Jobs. Fashion. Friends. The future. In other words, teenage life.
The August 28 issue is fascinating today partly because of something its writers couldn’t possibly have known.
Exactly two weeks later, terrorists would attack the United States on September 11, 2001.
Suddenly Americans would be talking about terrorism, war, airport security and national vulnerability. Memphis International Airport and FedEx, both enormously important to the local economy, would operate in a dramatically different security environment.
But none of that had happened yet.
That’s what makes a newspaper like Teen Appeal such an extraordinary historical document.
History books tend to organize the past around the events we now know were important. Contemporary newspapers preserve something different: life before people knew what was going to happen next.
The students writing in August 2001 weren’t living in the “pre-9/11 era.” They were simply living in 2001.
Their concerns, interests and expectations provide a snapshot of ordinary Memphis life immediately before an event that divided American history into a before and an after.
Sometimes the most revealing historical documents aren’t about history at all.
They’re about an ordinary Tuesday, just before everything changed.
Archive issues can be viewed here.