McKnight was born February 26, 1956 in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany, to an Air Force family; therefore, he moved around a lot in childhood, although he calls Colorado home.
He also taught at the University of Pittsburgh, but left when he learned that other faculty told racist jokes about black people when he wasn't in their presence.
[3] As of 2002, he is the Hamilton Holmes Professor of English at the University of Georgia in Athens;[4] he was also the first person to hold that position.
[2] McKnight has had two extended stays in Africa, teaching English in Dakar, Senegal, from 1981 to 1982, and another in 1985 as part of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.
[5] He also states that after a few weeks there, he became more aware of what he calls his "Africanness" by recognizing the same cadences in the voices of Senegalese women that he knew listening to his mother and his aunts growing up.