ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Baseball fans got to enjoy the game with a side of history as the IronPigs celebrate Juneteenth.<\/p>\n
“Here we are today celebrating a part of American history,” said Sonya Eddings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friday night is the IronPigs third year partnering with Juneteenth Lehigh Valley to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States.<\/p>\n
“It’s our history. It’s who we are as a country. And to have it recognized on the local scale with the Pigs is awesome,” said Kenya Karnga.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the National Anthem was sung, the Black National Anthem – “Lift Every Voice” – took center stage.<\/p>\n
“Its just the most beautiful thing,” said Tracie Springer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the stadium showcased banners honoring the National Negro Baseball League, recognizing its contributions to America’s favorite past time.<\/p>\n
“It’s an American history, you know, themed thing that everyone should know about,” said Springer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fans told us Friday night’s celebration is the reason they came.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been wanting to come to a Juneteenth game specific, specifically,” Kargna said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And others say, the night means more than just baseball…<\/p>\n
“It means liberation. It means recognition. It means love. It means unity,” said Amber Burgess.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Friday’s event is a part of a whole weekend of festivities here in the Lehigh Valley, including a parade and festival Saturday in Easton.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Baseball fans got to enjoy the game with a side of history as the IronPigs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,805],"class_list":["post-223626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehighvalley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223626","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=223626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}