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“I prayed and worked on.”
–Anna Knight, 1952

Innovative Administrator
Anna Knight: 1874 to 1972

Anna Knight was a little girl with an amazing appetite for knowledge. She was born in
1874 to an emancipated slave in Mississippi, and she grew up moving to the rhythm of work.
Anna’s mother subsisted as a sharecropper in Jasper County. By energetic labor and
disciplined frugality, Mrs. Knight managed to buy 80 acres of land. Later she and her
children homesteaded another 80 acres adjoining. With a cow, horse, and a yoke of
oxen, the multi-generational family grew all their own food as well as cotton for a cash
crop. But the small amount of cash was never enough.
The Knights could not afford “extras” such as pens and paper, to say nothing of
books or magazine subscriptions. Mrs. Knight and her brood did remarkably well to
acquire their land and livestock. (From Anna Knight, Mississippi Girl: An Autobiography
(Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1952). Material in this chapter not otherwise
credited is based on Miss Knight’s Autobiography). Without textbooks or writing materials,
Anna sought through creative means to satisfy her seemingly insatiable desire to learn.
In spite of the long hours of work, sometimes on Sunday Anna did get some free time.
When this happened, she was able to slip away and visit a friend who was so fortunate
as to own books. Anna would offer to help do the work if the friend would, in exchange,
teach her to read.
Anna was eager to share with her siblings, nieces, and nephews what she learned.
After nailing together boards, Anna blackened them with wet soot; when this handcrafted blackboard had thoroughly dried, she wrote on it with natural chalk dug out of
the mud bank. She set the other children to work copying in the sand the numbers and
letters that she printed on the board.
For recreation Anna loved to participate in, and to help organize, the neighborhood
spelling bees that were held on Sundays. She probably competed very well.
Reading virtually everything that she could get her hands on, Anna noticed an advertisement for a magazine for children of her own age. This she wanted more than
anything else in the world. Some way she coaxed her mother into letting her have the
dollar necessary to subscribe, but was firmly told never again to request a dollar for such
a wasteful luxury.