Knox County Local Directories

City directories constitute one of the most complete records of residential life in communities. In addition to indicating the street addresses of households, the directories often specified the occupation or employment status of members of the household. These records also allow for geographic mapping of households. Using U.S. Census records to confirm racial designations, we are able to match that data with city directories to locate residential concentrations and patterns. When uploaded to geo-locating software, these data can generate graphic representations of where these households were in relation to others and give a sense of ethnic and racial neighbors within the larger community as a whole.

In some years, usually prior to the 1930s, city directors often indicated when the head of the household was not white. By placing the letter “c” after the resident’s name, directory authors and publishers intentionally marked African American citizens as “colored.” This social convention of officially “othering” residents expanded in some years to specify additional racial and ethnic groups in directories. Even though rarely more than one percent of the total population of Knox County, Black residents constituted the single largest minority group. Thus, the most frequently occurring designation of racial identification that one would find in the directories was the letter “c.”

Using a methodology of cross-checking with U.S. Census records, this collection includes all city directory listings found for Knox County Black residents. The content of the directories has been transcribed to facilitate name and word searches, and images of the listings appear when available or sufficiently legible. See the image below for an example.