Two services and a parade are scheduled today and Monday to commemorate the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that lifted enslaved people in the slave-holding states from bondage.
Since the signing of the proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, people of African descent have gathered in places of worship for “watch night” services to await the new year.
As a child in Lincolnville, going to watch night service “was a mandate per my parent’s rules and regulations, as it was for their parents and grandparents,” said Pernessa Seele, president of the Lincolnville Preservation and Historical Society.
“As a young adult, without my parent’s mandate, it was a self-imposed requirement to go to watch night service ‘first’ on the way to the New Year’s Eve party,” she said.
At Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., the pews were filled with “Black folks praising God, dressed in high-rolling cocktail attire,” Seele recalled. “The New Year’s Eve party was scheduled to jump off at 1 a.m., after watch night service.”
Decades later, Seele ponders “why is watch night service so significant to African Americans and their history? Why must we continue this unique ritual of praising and praying on our knees, in fellowship with one another, as the New Year rolls in? Why is it important to pass this rich tradition of worship to our children and their children’s children?”
Then she paused and said: “Honoring our traditions and rituals of worship are crucial to the continuum of African American culture.”
The tradition continues
Freedom’s Eve: A Gullah Geechee Night and Emancipation Day Celebration will be held today at noon at Morris Brown AME Church at 13 Morris St. in Charleston.
Radio personality Lori “L.J.” Johnson will host the event with performances by the Magnolia Singers, the Deninufay African Dance and Drum ensemble, storyteller Jackie Mickel and the Moving Star Hall Praise House descendants.
The event is a collaboration with the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, the International African American Museum, Emancipation Proclamation Association, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, and the 7th Episcopal District of the AME Church.
The Gullah Geechee Corridor will hold similar daytime watch night events in Wilmington, N.C., and St. Augustine, Fla.
The Lincolnville Preservation and Historical Society will stage at 10:30 p.m. today a Community Watchnight Service at Wesley Church at 736 Front St. in Lincolnville.
Joseph McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, will read the emancipation proclamation.
Other speakers include Lincolnville’s mayor Enoch Dickerson III; Victoria A. Smalls, president and CEO of Smalls Cultural Resources; the Rev. DeMett E. Jenkins, the IAAM’s director of education and engagement for faith-based communities; Jeffrey Fielding, grandson of Zelma Fielding, Lincolnville’s only female mayor; and Sean McCray Thompson, the grandson of Lincolnville native, journalist and civil rights activist John Henry McCray.
At 11 a.m. Monday, the annual Emancipation Day Parade will begin at Burke High School and end at the IAAM at 14 Wharfside St. An Onward from Freedom’s Eve event will be held at the museum. Entertainment and food trucks will be offered in Gadsdenboro Park.
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