The Unpublished Memoir of an Indianapolis Community Leader

Abstract

As a participant in Indiana’s County Historian program, I have spent a significant amount of time delving into the lives of individuals who have contributed to the history of my home base, Hancock County. One who particularly interested me was George Knox, the son of a Cree Indian woman and a black Baptist preacher, who in 1863 led a party of slaves into the Union lines near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Knox eventually joined the 57th Indiana Infantry as a cook, servant, messenger, and, later, mule driver. In 1864 he migrated to Greenfield—where many veterans of the 57th Indiana already resided—and opened a barber shop in the Gooding block. By the 1890s, we find Knox in Indianapolis as the owner of several barbershops, including the exclusive establishments at the Bates and Dennison Hotels. In 1892, he purchased the city’s weekly black newspaper, The Freeman; two decades later he continued his influential leadership of the local African American community as one of the founders of the racially segregated Senate Avenue YMCA. In 1916, Knox and his fellow community leaders recruited Faburn E. DeFrantz— the branch’s physical director since 1913—for the post of executive sec-