On the morning of September 11, 2001, Michael Jackson was in New York City. He’d just played two huge anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden, and the city was suddenly in the middle of the worst day in its modern history.
He got himself and his children out, sheltering with friends over in New Jersey. But according to the fans who were there, before he left he gave his team one clear instruction. Don’t abandon the fans.
Think about who those fans actually were. People had flown in from Britain, from France, from all over the world, just to see him perform at the Garden. Now the airports were shut, the city was in chaos, and they were stranded thousands of miles from home with nowhere to go.
A fan who was stranded in New York tells the story
By those fan accounts, Michael had his team look after them. They were found hotel rooms. They were fed. And when the airports stayed closed and flights to Europe were grounded, the story goes that he helped arrange a bus to get the stranded fans safely out of the city, reportedly through a contact passed along by the rapper Master P.
He stayed close too. The fans describe him checking in on them, wanting to know they were safe, that they had somewhere to sleep and some way to eventually get home. One of them later put it very simply. At a terrifying moment in history, Michael made them feel safe.
A fan on seeing him at the Garden the night before
It’s a small story set against an enormous and painful day, so it’s worth holding gently. Thousands of people lost their lives that morning, and nothing here sits above that. But in the middle of all that fear, one man’s instinct was to make sure the strangers who had come so far to see him didn’t get left behind.
There were no cameras on any of it, and no headline waiting at the end. He just didn’t want his fans stuck and frightened and alone in a strange city. That tells you something about him.