[6] 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.
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.
[5] 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.
[8] 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.
[10] 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.
[11] 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.
[4] McKnight was inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame in 1987, while he was still living, and he received an honorary doctorate from Duquesne University, a school run by his religious order, in 1993.