The Baton Foundation

Our Story

Anthony Knight incorporated The Baton Foundation in May 2015 to serve the emotional, cultural and intellectual needs of Black boys in Atlanta and in the African Diaspora. The inspiration, however, first came to Mr. Knight in the fall of 1993, while enrolled in the Museum Education graduate program at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The initial thought was that the organization would be a multidisciplinary, multi-building campus and bear the name of his paternal great, great grandparents, Mary Elizabeth and Alexander Adams—both born into U.S. chattel slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. Before dawn that early-fall morning, Mr. Knight awoke and sketched the vision that came to him in his sleep—a forty acre compound that included a museum, a school, an archives/library, a performing arts theater, a center for spirituality and human consciousness, eight gardens, a working farm and four reflecting pools (Mr. Knight still possesses the original sketch).

Over the next twenty-two years the initial vision would take many shapes and present itself in various mental manifestations; however, life’s pressing issues seemed always to take center stage. Anthony never forgot, though, the powerful vision that came to him all those years earlier. And in February 2015, after leading a focus group about the Atlanta Student Movement, a simple conversation between Mr. Knight and the late Dr. Lonnie C. King, Jr. (a participant in the focus group and a leader of the Atlanta Student Movement), served as the catalyst that brought together his initial vision, its myriad iterations and Mr. Knight’s present concerns for Black boys in the United States and abroad.

While we made important contributions to this country and to the world during the modern Civil Rights Movement, King said, we have to stop teaching our kids that it’s all over. We have to approach teaching civil rights to our kids as if we were training them to run a relay race. For while some of the strategies and approaches we used will work today, it is each generation’s responsibility to figure out what will work best for the challenges it faces at that time. Each generation has to run its leg of the race.

From the mental image of running a relay race, Mr. Knight took that sport’s principal icon, the baton, and christened his foundation. Thus was born The Baton Foundation, Inc.