Honoring and remembering Watch Night

Published 4:00 pm Sunday, December 29, 2019

New Year’s Eve, 1862.

It’s hard to imagine if you weren’t there and everyone who was has long since left us.

Across the country, in the South and the North, black families and congregations gathered together.

Earlier in the year, after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln had declared that within 100 days, slaves held in Confederate territory would be declared free.

It’s easy to look back now and know that it happened, but at the time there was no guarantee. No certainty.

There was no certainty in much of life for the enslaved.

According to Valdosta State University history professor Dr. David Williams in his book, “A People’s History of the Civil War,” black families and congregations often met on New Year’s Eve before 1862.

New Year’s Day for many black people in the slave-era South was known as “Heartbreak Day,” New Year’s Day was often the day when slaveholders sold slaves, when families, parents and children, husbands and wives, were torn apart and separated.

Slaves gathered on New Year’s Eve because that may be the last time many families had the opportunity to be together.

On New Year’s Eve, 1862, there was hope, undoubtedly, but also fear as they waited to hear if they would have that thing that had been stolen from them since birth.

Freedom.

So they waited and prayed and hoped.

Word spread later in the day, New Year’s Day, 1863.

“I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States,” the Proclamation read, “and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be, free.”

The proclamation—a presidential order and not a law—would be followed two years later with the 13th Amendment. Ninety-nine years after that, the Civil Rights Act.

In the decades since slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation, Watch Night has evolved into an evening that honors the past, celebrates family fellowship and takes an opportunity to re-dedicate people’s lives to Christ.

It’s a night that, 157 years later, bears honoring and remembering. Our local Watch Night services include:

• Springfield Baptist Church will host a Watch Night service with guest speaker Rev. Donnell Brown, 10 p.m.

• Temple of Love Ministry (105 E. 13th St.) will hold Watch Night starting at 10 p.m.