Holy Ghost Catholic Church

After returning to Kaplan, McKnight served at various other parishes before being assigned to Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Opelousas, Louisiana, where he gained considerable fame as the SCC grew. Soon other developments emerged, including the Acadian Delight cooperative bakery, which received a $25,000 loan from President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty program. An ardent activist, McKnight also attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.^[5]

At Holy Ghost, McKnight also became known for his religious activism, emerging as a notable advocate of the Black Catholic Movement. He played a pivotal role as a founding member of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (in which he would serve as the first executive director). He began a program of Black inculturation at Holy Ghost, including the removal of Eurocentric images and music, and replacing them with Black saints, gospel music, and the Black preaching idiom. He also helped develop the NBCCC's founding manifesto, which famously claimed that "The Catholic Church in the U.S. is primarily a White, racist institution.”^[3] He would later take part in the NBCCC's agitations for an African-American Catholic rite.^[6]

Cooperative economics

Meanwhile, he created the Southern Cooperative Education Fund (SCEF), which in 1967 received a half a million dollars to spread cooperative economics through the South. His new Southern Cooperative Development Fund (SCDF) received another half-million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation in 1969, which McKnight helped turn into a $30M operation with various subsidiary coops.

"Over a 25-year period, [McKnight] was in the vanguard of organizing 75 cooperatives, credit unions and minority businesses across the Southern United States."^[3]

McKnight was profiled in Ebony magazine in 1968, as he began advocating not only for economic uplift but political action as well. At the time, few African Americans had ever run for office, and McKnight became one of the first himself while encouraging others to also start their own campaigns. His activism against racism and economic oppression resulted in at least two arrests.^[3]

In 1969, McKnight and his collaborators received an invitation from Histadrut, a labor organization in Israel, to come observe their kibbutzes communities and collectivized farms (moshavim). McKnight, upon his return to the States, began mentoring a young Ronald Mason Jr., who would later go on to practice law and head a number of Black universities. With McKnight, he headed a number of subsidiaries within the larger Southern coop movement established by McKnight—including the new collective farms created under the Israeli model.^[3][7]

The farms would not survive long as a unified operation, due to various disputes. Likewise, several of the cooperative operations would not last beyond McKnight's period of direct influence. Controversy concerning how to spend grant funds split the leadership of the SCDF in the 1970s, and McKnight left coop activity entirely for a number of years thereafter.^[3]

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter appointed McKnight to the board of the newly established National Cooperative Bank.^[6] Around the same time, he organized the first Zydeco festival in Louisiana, and his cooperative network provided the loan that helped establish the jazz and funk radio station WWOZ in New Orleans.^[8]

Return to Holy Ghost

After several years of economic work and activism, McKnight returned full-time to Holy Ghost in 1982, with the church having more than 10,000 members—making it the largest Black Catholic parish in the United States. His continued insistence on inculturation and activistic anti-racism led some Black parishioners to leave the parish, and prominent White citizens to protest to the local Church hierarchy.^[3] In 1987, when the local school board threatened to close a historically Black school, McKnight hosted 1,000 local African Americans to discuss the issue at Holy Ghost. They received a bomb threat, and the successful meeting was aired on CBS News's evening broadcast with Dan Rather. A later protest at the school board offices resulted in the arrest of McKnight and others, with McKnight being charged with incitement.^[9]

In 1988, Bishop Gerard Louis Frey controversially forced McKnight out of the parish, after the Spiritans gave the ultimatum that they would leave the diocese if this occurred. McKnight would later state that the episode threatened his religious career and he considered leaving the priesthood. Instead, he received support from his religious order's leaders and decided to remain a priest; nevertheless, he began growing his beard "until [he] received justice" from the diocese.^[1] The Holy Ghost Fathers would ultimately cede Holy Ghost Church and their other local parishes to the Society of the Divine Word.^[10]

Haiti

McKnight then moved into a nearby home with his ailing mother, before departing to Haiti to continue working. He later returned stateside and served as novice director for his province of the Spiritans. He asked to retire, again to Haiti, in 2005. There, he had helped establish a college the year prior, today known as the University of Fondwa.