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Published: March 12 2012

FORT LAUDERDALE - Three Broward County students will be recognized as winners of the 2012 Black History Month Essay Contest, sponsored by Best Buy. The award ceremony will be held Wednesday, March 14 at 6 p.m. at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center (AARLCC), 2650 Sistrunk Blvd., Fort Lauderdale.

The winners are: in the grades 4 – 6 category, Chantel Kristine Mackey, a fifth-grader from Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School; in the grades 7 – 9 category, Jordan Arterberry, an eighth-grader from Seminole Middle School; and in the grades 10 – 11 category, Junie Saint-Preux, an 11th-grader from Plantation High School.

The topic of the essay contest was "The Changing Era for African-Americans in the United States and Abroad in the 1940s." In their essays, the students wrote about some of the discrimination struggles of African-American families during World War II and the reform in the African-American community in the 1940s.

In her essay, Chantel writes "in the USA, jobs for African-Americans were hard to find in northern and western industrial businesses. Still, this was better than trying to find a job in the South." Jordan writes that his grandpa had been part of World War II, along with "over 125,000 African-American soldiers." His grandpa told him "they had been put into separate tents even though they still fought the same war." In her essay, Junie says, "due to the overcrowded cities, the tension among the races grew, which by 1943, led to race riots."

This year's theme ties in with the yearlong exhibit of "Fabulous Forties on the Avenue" at the AARLCC. The name of the exhibit refers to Northwest 5th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale during the late 1940s, which was a neighborhood that inspired generations of African-American families to push through the boundaries of segregation in the pursuit of survival, cultural reformation and entrepreneurship.

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