Members of many black churches in New York and around the country concluded services at the stroke of midnight Wednesday with the same simple act that has signaled the arrival of the new year in their tradition for almost 150 years.<\/p>\n
They got up off their knees.<\/p>\n
It is the concluding ritual moment of Watch Night, a midnight prayer service first adopted in 1862, on the eve of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. This time around, with the first black president-elect poised for inauguration, it was a moment layered with profound meaning.<\/p>\n
Black churches in the cities and suburbs of New York, Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles were filled to capacity on Wednesday for Watch Night, also known as Freedom\u2019s Eve. The Rev. Dr. Brad R. Braxton of Riverside Church in Manhattan described the passing year as one in which, for many black Americans, \u201cthe rhetoric of freedom in America came to be an actuality.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n