Etheridge Knight
1931 - 1991
Etheridge Knight was an African-American poet. Considered one of the most important poets of the American literary tradition, he was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Book Award for Poetry. Born in Corinth, Mississippi, he was incarcerated in Indianapolis in 1960, where he discovered poetry. Knight first made his name in 1968 with his debut volume, Poems from Prison, which recalls in verse his eight-year-long sentence. Poems established Knight as one of the major poets of the Black Arts Movement, which flourished from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s.