{"id":222677,"date":"2026-06-18T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/222677\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T22:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:25:10","slug":"thousands-expected-as-pittsburghs-juneteenth-celebration-continues-to-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/222677\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands expected as Pittsburgh&#8217;s Juneteenth celebration continues to grow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Preparations are underway for Pittsburgh&#8217;s 2026 Juneteenth celebrations.<\/p>\n<p>Friday marks the day when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were freed, two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.<\/p>\n<p>The people celebrated then. Now, 161 years later, those celebrations continue.<\/p>\n<p>Margo Marshall and her husband, B. Marshall, are the organizers of the three-day Juneteenth festival in downtown Pittsburgh this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0It&#8217;s one of the biggest in western Pennsylvania, fitting for a city whose waterways provided a path to freedom.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/download-64.png#.png\" alt=\"download-64.png \" height=\"348\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  Pittsburgh&#8217;s Juneteenth celebration is one of the biggest in western Pennsylvania, fitting for a city whose waterways provided a path to freedom.<\/p>\n<p>                KDKA-TV<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This backdrop shows us some of the safe houses. This backdrop shows what happens before there is a Juneteenth. The fact that enslaved individuals had no real options in order to pursue their freedom other than self-liberation, running away, taking their freedom, or trying to find places where they could find sanctuary or remaining in bondage,&#8221; explained Alonna Carter with the Heinz History Center.<\/p>\n<p>In 2021, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. Margo Marshall said Pittsburgh has been celebrating that freedom for more than 10 years, and it keeps getting bigger.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been about 13 years, and no, we did not expect this,&#8221; Margo said. &#8220;It makes us feel really good because we started out very humbly, so we&#8217;re very proud that we have grown so much organically.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The event brings in thousands of people. There will be more than 100 vendors, performances by Lloyd, Musiq Soulchild, Fabolous, and more.<\/p>\n<p>The free festival will take place throughout Market Square, on Liberty Avenue, and in Point State Park.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preparations are underway for Pittsburgh&#8217;s 2026 Juneteenth celebrations. Friday marks the day when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[21756,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-222677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-juneteenth","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}