Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, a yellow hard hat worn by Black New York operating engineer Elizabeth “Queen Ann” Burnett during the cleanup of Ground Zero is helping preserve the often-overlooked story of the workers who cleared the wreckage.
Burnett grew up in New York City and entered the construction trades at 18 as a dock builder, according to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
In 1993, she secured an apprenticeship with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 15 to become an operating engineer, despite facing racial and gender discrimination.
After the World Trade Center collapsed, Burnett was among thousands of construction workers who worked at Ground Zero. She worked there for nearly a year, maintaining and operating heavy equipment used in the cleanup, sometimes putting in 12-, 24- and 36-hour shifts.
In total, workers removed about 1.6 million tons of construction materials and human remains from the site, the NMAAHC noted.
The work left a lasting psychological impact on Burnett. According to the museum, she was among the cleanup workers who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder.
She turned to art as part of her recovery, transforming the back of her SUV into an art studio and creating three-dimensional pieces known as shadowboxes. Her piece Ground zero the pit recreates the cleanup site with miniature heavy machinery, debris and photographs from Ground Zero.
Today, Burnett’s construction hard hat is now part of a collection of items donated to NMAAHC, along with a block of glass she recovered from the World Trade Center site and artwork she created depicting the cleanup.
The yellow hard hat, manufactured by Jackson Products, is covered with stickers, markings and signatures referencing Ground Zero, the Twin Towers, Burnett’s operating engineers union and New York’s first responders.
One sticker reads, “GROUND ZERO / WTC-7 / WELCOME TO HELL,” offering a glimpse into the grueling and traumatic conditions Burnett and other workers faced at the site.
"When Elizabeth 'Queen Ann' Burnett donated her hard hat and shadow box to the Museum, she entrusted us with a deeply personal record of nearly a year spent at Ground Zero — work that exacted a toll few people ever fully see,” Dwandalyn Reece, Associate Director for the Humanities at NMAAHC told BIN.
“The hard hat she wore through those 12-, 24-, and 36-hour shifts carries the physical weight of that labor,” Reece continued, “while the shadow box she made afterward, as part of her own healing, reminds us that resilience and creativity are often bound together in the aftermath of trauma.”
In a September 11, 2024 post shared to social media, the museum identified the hard hat as one of 25 Smithsonian objects available to explore in 3D on the museum’s website.
A year later, the museum again highlighted her story, saying her “Up from Ground Zero” honors “the thousands of round-the-clock construction workers who helped the country heal.”
Burnett’s artifacts preserve a part of the September 11 story that unfolded long after the attacks: the work of thousands of people who spent months clearing Ground Zero.
“NMAAHC is honored to have a role in making sure her story, and the sacrifice of the thousands who worked alongside her, remains part of how America remembers 9/11,” Reece said.
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