George L. Knox

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George Levi Knox Sr. (September 16, 1841 – August 24, 1927) was an American escaped slave, soldier, publisher, and author who lived in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was born in Statesville, Tennessee, to enslaved parents and was sold into slavery when he was very young. During the Civil War, his master forced him to fight for the Confederacy, but Knox escaped and joined the Union Army, serving with the 55th Indiana Infantry Regiment as a teamster before eventually leaving the military and moving to Indianapolis after the war.

After the war, Knox learned barbering and started his own barber business. In 1884 he opened several barber shops and a shaving parlor in Indianapolis. His shops employed Black barbers but mainly served white customers. He also started a Negro league baseball team, the Indianapolis Barber Base Ball Club, with his son Elwood pitch­ing for the team.

Knox became a prominent publisher. In 1893 he bought The Indianapolis Freeman, a weekly Black newspaper that he ran until 1926. The paper, known as “A National Illustrated Colored Newspaper,” had a circulation of about 25,000 and reached readers in America and beyond. Booker T. Washington contributed to the Freeman, which covered news, sports, and culture. In 1894 Knox began publishing his memoirs in the Freeman as a weekly serial titled Life as I Remember It – As a Slave and Freeman. The memoirs were later published in book form as Slave and Freeman, Autobiography of George L. Knox in 1979.

Personal life: Knox married Auralia Susie Harvey in 1865, and they had four children—William, Nellie, Edward, and Elwood. Auralia died in 1910, and in 1914 he married Margaret Nickens. His grandson George L. Knox II became a pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II.

Knox died on August 24, 1927, in Richmond, Virginia, from a paralytic stroke at the age of 85.