We're looking at the history of watch night, a New Year's Eve tradition for Black Americans that goes back to the Civil War.

Watch Night, also known as Freedom’s Eve, is a sacred New Year’s Eve tradition in Black communities rooted in Christian worship and remembrance of Dec. 31, 1862, when enslaved and free African ...

By keeping watch, Black communities transformed a single night of waiting into a living theology of freedom. They taught time to remember. They taught faith to speak history aloud. In a nation that ...