Pulaski Street School announces winners of Juneteenth essay contest

Three Pulaski Street Intermediate School fifth-graders were deemed the winners of this year’s annual Juneteenth Essay contest on Wednesday for their creative writing submissions reflecting on the federal holiday.

Celebrated every June 19, Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in Texas in 1865. It became a federal holiday in 2021, but Pulaski Street fifth-graders have marked Juneteenth through the essay contest for nearly two decades. 

“Over the years, the contest has opened the minds of many students to the horrors of slavery … Students are often astounded that it took two and a half years for all slaves to receive their freedom,” contest organizer Trevor Hewitt said.

Robert ‘Bubbie’ Brown of the East End Voters Coalition helped start the tradition, developing the idea during his time at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the late 1990s, when he first learned about Juneteenth commemorations.

In previous years, the students were asked to write a journal entry from the point of view of an enslaved child in 1865 who has just learned that they have been liberated. However, in response to concerns from Pulaski Street parents last year about the appropriateness of this particular prompt, Riverhead Central School District superintendent Cheryl Pedisich said in an email that she, former principal Patrick Burke and Mr. Brown met to discuss the essay and this year, the new essay prompt was implemented.

Students were asked this year to “write a poem or use prose to write in celebration of Juneteenth,” and there were nearly 100 submissions, Mr. Brown said. Each winner read their poem aloud to their peers in the school’s auditorium, and then the winner’s class had an ice cream party Wednesday afternoon in the cafeteria.

“I think there’s got to be more exposure to poetry for the kids — if they start writing, it can be a release,” Mr. Brown said.

Read the winners’ essays below.