Juneteenth celebration will expand to Market Square, feature voting-rights forum
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War is coming to Pittsburgh this summer. But it’s not the kind with tanks and guns — it’s the kind with guitars and drums.
Legendary funk-soul band War will headline the 2022 Western Pennsylvania Juneteenth Homecoming Celebration, announced this week for June 17-19.
And while last year’s Juneteenth celebration at Point State Park rolled right over into the city’s Black Music Festival, this year it will expand to include a new secondary venue and a voting-rights forum.
“We’re sort of patterning our festival after what they do in Cincinnati,” said William Marshall, founder of community group Stop the Violence PGH, which has organized Juneteenth celebrations in the city for the past eight years. “They did an economic survey in 2017 and discovered that their festival generates about $107 million.”
Marshall plans to take advantage of that economic leverage, creating a Juneteenth Minority Vendor Plaza on Liberty and Penn avenues with more than 200 small businesses.
“It helps our local minority vendors generate money that then circulates back into their neighborhoods in the city,” Marshall said.
It will also help shepherd Juneteenth attendees from the festival’s main area at Point State Park to the new Juneteenth in the Square, which will take over Market Square with a focus on local musicians and artists.
Marshall said he wants to build on a successful 2021 celebration.
“My understanding is that during those eight or nine days, we had the largest festival in Pennsylvania, estimated around 100,000 people,” he said. “It was certainly the largest Juneteenth celebration in Pennsylvania.”
Marshall would like to try and double attendance this year, and Stop the Violence PGH is partnering with tourism group Visit Pittsburgh, which is sponsoring an economic survey to put a dollar figure on the festival’s impact on local businesses.
“They’ll track that for Juneteenth as well as our other events like the Soul Food Festival and the Black Music Festival,” Marshall said.
Speaking of music, in addition to War, the Juneteenth preliminary artist lineup also includes soul singer Raheem Devaughn, the Rose Royce Band, former Salt’n’Pepa member DJ Spinderella, Dazz Band, DJ Holiday, Sons of Mystro and Sunshine Anderson.
“We’re looking to add two or three more acts as well, between now and June,” Marshall said. “I think the festival gives us a great opportunity to not just celebrate, but create an economic impact. It brings in tourism, it helps the city, and it helps other events happening here during that same time.”
Other events that are part of the celebration include a 10 a.m. parade and a 1 p.m. voting rights forum on June 18 and a cultural lecture series June 12-14 at both the Frick Pittsburgh and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture.
For event updates and more information, see StopTheViolencePGH.com or call 724-205-9376.