Although Juneteenth is part of our country’s history, you won’t find it in every classroom’s curriculum.

So teachers in the Troy City School District got creative and made it fun for students with an arts & essay contest.

The winner was a fourth grader who wrote “Inside A Life of a Slave.”

The following is an excerpt from that poem.

Imagine this, you’re at your house, the people come, they chain you up, you try to resist but then you realize they have the will to you.

They put you on a boat, you make a mental note. You see people falling out, people are already withering out. You think I’m going to make it?

But there’s no doubt about it because in your heart, you know, it’s gonna shout it that you are making it. That’s the only thing keeping your soul alive.

This is one of the more than 75 projects submitted this year for Troy school districts’ 2024 Juneteenth Arts & Essay Contest. 

There were 18 winners.

Another one of those winners, Atiqah Umarmukhtar, is working with her teachers on these dolls that are covered in Juneteenth freedom colors.

They are also selling two Juneteenth T-shirts. All the funds from the sales are split and given to the children in the contest.

The contest is one of the initiatives to come from the Troy Teachers Association’s Together We Rise program. Fourth-grade teacher Tina Wilcox and sixth-grade teacher Carrie Dwyer said the district needed this program.

Learn more how the program came together and what it does by watching video of Faith King’s story.