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Evelyn Knight – Civil Rights Activist and Community Organizer

An engaged and respected Long Beach elder, Miss Evelyn Knight has led a life of engagement in civil and equal rights activism.

 

A native of Africatown in Mobile, Alabama, she had experienced segregation as a child, and chose to take the five day march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights. Pushing past fear into something bigger, she joined the crowd, kneeling to pray at the beckoning of Dr. King. Miss Knight took her activism from coast, to coast, from Baltimore, Maryland to Richmond, California, where she worked with organizations like the Black Panthers and their free breakfast program for children, senior escort service, and busing programs to take families to visit relatives in prison.

Believing the best and most sustainable path out of poverty and inequality is education, Miss Knight helped integrate an all-white school district in the Florissant suburb of St. Louis in the 1950s as a teacher and later taught Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Having faced Anti-Blackness and discrimination head-on in Long Beach in the 1960’s, she has taken the lessons from the past to continue to build for the future of community.

Miss Knight Helped found the Long Beach Community Improvement League, the oldest anti-poverty program in Long Beach, where she supported its first program, Project Tutor, laying the groundwork for the organization to provide the first Head Start early learning program in the western states region. She retired as the Executive Director of People Coordinated Services in Los Angeles in 1997. As a community organizer, she held discussion groups in her home, stood up against polluters in West Long Beach, advocated for environmental justice, supported the local Filipino Migrant Center, trained future generations of organizers, and continues to teach and speak out about housing discrimination, racism, inequality, and the power of community solidarity.

#BlackWomenAreDivine
Offered by Audrena Redmond @audrenar
Graphic by Megan Castillo @megann.jade
DONATE
get involved

Evelyn Knight – Civil Rights Activist and Community Organizer

An engaged and respected Long Beach elder, Miss Evelyn Knight has led a life of engagement in civil and equal rights activism.

 

A native of Africatown in Mobile, Alabama, she had experienced segregation as a child, and chose to take the five day march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights. Pushing past fear into something bigger, she joined the crowd, kneeling to pray at the beckoning of Dr. King. Miss Knight took her activism from coast, to coast, from Baltimore, Maryland to Richmond, California, where she worked with organizations like the Black Panthers and their free breakfast program for children, senior escort service, and busing programs to take families to visit relatives in prison.

Believing the best and most sustainable path out of poverty and inequality is education, Miss Knight helped integrate an all-white school district in the Florissant suburb of St. Louis in the 1950s as a teacher and later taught Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Having faced Anti-Blackness and discrimination head-on in Long Beach in the 1960’s, she has taken the lessons from the past to continue to build for the future of community.

Miss Knight Helped found the Long Beach Community Improvement League, the oldest anti-poverty program in Long Beach, where she supported its first program, Project Tutor, laying the groundwork for the organization to provide the first Head Start early learning program in the western states region. She retired as the Executive Director of People Coordinated Services in Los Angeles in 1997. As a community organizer, she held discussion groups in her home, stood up against polluters in West Long Beach, advocated for environmental justice, supported the local Filipino Migrant Center, trained future generations of organizers, and continues to teach and speak out about housing discrimination, racism, inequality, and the power of community solidarity.

#BlackWomenAreDivine
Offered by Audrena Redmond @audrenar
Graphic by Megan Castillo @megann.jade

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DONATE take action Press Archive Yes Magazine July 28, 2023 Erin Aubry Kaplan For 50-year-old Melina Abdullah, that moment came in 2013. “I remember where

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