Where Bread Is Found2d ago
Join us for a special Christmas Eve Watchnight Service at Hamilton Baptist Church! ✨
​📍 23 Kemp Street, Hamilton ML3 6QL
🕙 Starts at 11:15 PM
​Can't make it in person? Join us online here:
https://youtube.com/@hamiltonbaptistchurch
​#ChristmasEve #Hamilton #Watchnight
HistorianspeaksJan 1
See our post on Watch Night services in Black communities. For Black enslaved communities, this practice can be traced to 1862 as they waited for the Emancipation Proclamation to take force on January 1st 1863. #WatchNight #EmancipationProclamation https://historianspeaks.org/f/new-years-watch-night-service
New Year's Watch Night Service

African American commemorations for the New Year are diverse. One of the most enduring in the New Year's Night Watch Service. These Watch Night services can be traced back to gatherings on December 31, 1862. This date wa...

HistorianSpeaks
OUR COMMON GROUNDDec 31, 2024

"In the African-American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the African-American abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families."

https://ibw21.org/reparations/new-years-day-slavery-history/
#WatchNight #BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackHistory #N'guzoSaba

The Dark History of New Year's Day in American Slavery

By Olivia B. Waxman — "Of all days in the year, the slaves dread New Year's Day the worst of any," one 1842 account explained. Here's why.

Institute of the Black World 21st Century
CarolleisaDec 31, 2023

#WatchNight #FreedomNight
“It is a day for poetry and song, a new song. These cloudless skies, this balmy air, this brilliant sunshine . . . are in harmony with the glorious morning of liberty about to dawn up on us.”
Frederick Douglass
December 31, 1862

https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-watch-night

The Historical Legacy of Watch Night

Watch Night or “Freedom's Eve,” marks when African Americans across the country watched and waited for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect. Today, Watch Night service encourages reflection on the history of slavery and the previous year.

National Museum of African American History and Culture