Who was Etheridge Knight?
Etheridge Knight—or “Junior” as he was called by his family—was born on April 19, 1931 in Corinth, Mississippi, one of seven children of Etheridge “Bushie” Knight and Belzora Cozart Knight. The Knights moved to Paducah, Kentucky, where Etheridge “Jr.” dropped out of school, and in 1947 he joined the military at age 16; during that time, the family moved to Indianapolis. After his enlistment, Knight served as a medical technician in the Korean War and was honorably discharged twice, in 1947 and 1950. Upon his return to Indianapolis, Knight carried with him a shrapnel wound and psychological terror that contributed to his addiction to opiates…
I died in Korea from a shrapnel wound, and narcotics resurrected me. I died in 1960 from a prison sentence, and poetry brought me back to life.
– Etheridge Knight
The Etheridge Knight Project
What is the Etheridge Knight Project?
Butler University has partnered with the Indianapolis Public Library’s Center for Black Literature and Culture to use Butler’s Etheridge Knight Collection to bring community members together with faculty, staff, and students to celebrate the poetry of Knight, and to reanimate his goal of creating an inclusive mix of family, readers, writers, and students.
What does the Etheridge Knight Project do for the community?
In response to the recent groundswell of divisive rhetoric, this project will also serve as a model for supporting one of the capacities essential to a healthy community (and a healthy democracy): the ability to empathize with others and thereby to appreciate and learn from commonalities and differences between Self and Other.
Who is involved in the Etheridge Knight Project?
An advisory committee comprised of surviving members of Knight’s family, friends and colleagues of Knight, representatives from the Center for Black Literature and Culture, institutional team members, and student researchers. The advisory committee will have oversight of specific project goals and products, as a way to ensure all public products and exhibits align with family wishes and serve Knight’s unmistakable goal of exploring what it means to be a person in the world.
The Digital Museum
The original student researchers on the Etheridge Knight project put together our current digital exhibit, which brings together Etheridge’s work on three themes – the Community Poet, Black Women and Identity, and Origins and Influence.
[Knight] was not only [a] prison poet or Black Arts Movement Poet as he is commonly hailed, but someone who lived in the Word, who made and found communities that mapped onto his identities, who could connect with anyone through the sharing of feelings.
– Chris Strong, Student Researcher
The success of this project has been an ongoing community-wide effort. Learn more about our committees, the student researchers who launched the project, and our partners who supported us along the way.