Beaufort church will celebrate ‘Freedom’s Eve’ to ring in 2024. ‘It’s very joyous’

Some residents in Beaufort and Port Royal and the Sea Islands will be in church on New Year’s Eve, not partying. They will recall the previous year and pray in anticipation of 2024. And they will remember the Emancipation Proclamation, that founding document signed 160 years ago by Abraham Lincoln that declared that all persons held as slaves “henceforward shall be free.”

“Watch night” services, which date to the great anticipation of African Americans in the hours leading up to the Jan. 1, 1863 proclamation, are a tradition with deep meaning and roots in the Lowcountry, especially for Black churches.

“A lot of times,” says Rev. Kenneth Hodges, “they look at it as Freedom’s Eve.”

Hodges is pastor at the Tabernacle Baptist Church at 901 Craven St. in Beaufort, which is one of many churches across Beaufort County that will be conducting watch night services this New Year’s Eve, which falls on Sunday.

Tabernacle Baptist’s service is from 10 p.m. to midnight. The public is welcome, Hodges says.

In some ways, Hodges said, the meetings are like a traditional prayer service and can be quite meaningful, with people offering testimony, songs and prayers as they look back at the previous year and look ahead with anticipation. But these gatherings also are a time to recall Lincoln’s executive order, which went into effect at midnight Jan. 1, 1863.

At some services, the document granting freedom to slaves is read aloud.

“It’s a unique place to be,” Hodges says of the gatherings. “Throughout the Lowcountry you’ll find communities gathering for a watch night service.”

On the night of Dec. 31, 1862, enslaved and free African Americans gathered to watch and wait for news that the previously announced Emancipation Proclamation would, in fact, become the law of the land at midnight.

“And that’s the first time,” Hodges said, “they were actually free.”

The church and the region has a direct connection to that history.

Early members of the Tabernacle Baptist church, for example, gathered on Jan. 1, 1863, and passed a resolution “to give Mr. Lincoln our hearty thanks for the proclamation.”

“We are more than thankful to him and to God,” the resolution says, “and pray for him and ourselves.”

That document, signed by 13 church members, resides in the Library of Congress.

On that very same day, people from across the Sea Islands, both Black and white, gathered at the Smith Plantation for what became one of the largest and earliest readings of the Emancipation Proclamation in the nation. Today, the location of the historic reading is home to the Naval Hospital in Port Royal.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission noted in a recent report that it appears as if the original tie of watch night to the Emancipation Proclamation has been largely lost, even though the annual New Year’s Eve services continue.

The Beaufort-based Commission oversees a National Heritage Area established by Congress to recognize Gullah Geechee people and their culture, who have traditionally resided in the coastal areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Calling the Emancipation Proclamation one of the foundational national documents in American history, standing with the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, the corridor is making a push to re-establish the link between watch night services and the proclamation.

Toward that end, this New Year’s Eve, daytime watch night and emancipation day celebrations are planned in Charleston, Wilmington, N.C. and Jacksonville, Fla. at noon. The Freedom’s Eve celebrations will feature Gullah Geechee history and cultural performances.

As midnight approaches, the watch night service at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort will see members of the congregation on their knees in prayer as they greet the new year, continuing the tradition that began 160 years ago.

“It’s similar,” says Hodges. “Really, we will meet and open it up to the congregation. And anybody who has a song or prayer or some expression, they are open to do it. It’s very joyous.”