Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church will ring in the New Year of 2023 with dynamic preaching, communion, and the observance of the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation! Members, family, friends, and the community are invited to celebrate the new year with Rev. Enoch Fuzz, pastor of Corinthian at 819 33rd Ave. N. At 11 am, the first worship service of the year will have special guest speaker Rev. Stoney Butler of Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church from Memphis, Tennessee. During that service, communion will be presided over by Rev. Fuzz.
It is also a special day of service as Corinthian recognizes the 160th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Lincoln, on January 1, 1863. This observance will be led by General Sessions Judge Robin K. Hayes. Many do not recognize this important date (January 1, 1863), because it seems to get lost in the celebration of leaving an old year and coming into the New Year. The document proclaimed that slaves held in areas still in rebellion “…are and henceforward shall be free.” It also announced the acceptance of Black men into the Union Army and Navy. Yes, this sounds a lot like ‘Juneteenth.’ However, this is the actual day that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, bringing in the New Year of 1863.
When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect January 1, 1863 African American soldiers in the Union Army had been fighting the Confederacy along the South Carolina coast for nearly an entire year. On January 1st these soldiers assembled with their families to celebrate. Their commander, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, had been a Unitarian minister and abolitionist before the Civil War. Black and White Boston residents stormed into the city to free Black fugitive slaves who had thought they had reached a city where their liberty would be protected. Higginson had also been an active participant in the Underground Railroad and was part of a group that supplied material aid to John Brown just before his ill-fated raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.
Higginson left a diary that recorded these events and eventually became the basis for his best-selling book, Army Life in A Black Regiment, and Other Writings, which was originally published in 1870.
Please continue to pray, enjoy and share Rev. Fuzz’s Meta postings and weekly journey, ‘Cancer: My Journey in Time.’ May you be blessed with the information. While reading and praying, look up more information on the celebration of freedom as a way to start the new year.
