Today a new year signifies a fresh start and new opportunities. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day are heralded and celebrated as a chance to begin again. However, before the Civil War, the holiday was a dreadful time for slaves in America. In an article in TIME, Olivia B. Waxman detailed the history behind what was once known as “Heartbreak Day” for enslaved Black people.
According to Waxman, New Year’s Day was also known as “Hiring Day” because it was the day white slaveowners would rent or sell their slaves, thus separating Black families.
First-hand accounts of slaves dreading Hiring Day paint an inhumane picture all too familiar. “Of all days in the year, the slaves dread New Year’s Day the worst of any,” Lewis Clarke, an enslaved man wrote in his 1842 account.
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In Harriet Jacobs’ famous autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” she wrote, “Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2[n]d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters,” adding, “At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals to hear their doom pronounced.”
Despite short lived celebrations by slaves when the federal government banned the transatlantic slave trade on New Year’s Day in 1808, the voracity of the domestic slave trade still made the day a frightful one.
It wasn’t until President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves on New Year’s Day in 1863 that Black families had a real reason to celebrate, Wexler reported.
It is where the popular “Watch Night” services held at Black churches today on New year’s Eve stem from. On December 31, 1862, slaves went to church to sing and celebrate their pending freedom.
