Trusting Southerners: Meshie Knight on power, patience, and the Packard Foundation’s belief in the U.S. South

When Meshie Knight started at the Packard Foundation about two years ago, the Foundation already had a decade-long investment strategy through its Reproductive Health and Children and Families initiatives in Louisiana and Mississippi. “As a national funder, this was striking to me,” she recalls, “many national funders don’t generally have place-based strategies.” She quickly set about to harness what felt a little like an opportunity hiding in plain sight.

The Making of the U.S. Racial Justice Initiative’s South Strategy

In addition to investments in Louisiana and Mississippi, Knight points to several factors that created strong tailwinds for expanded work in the U.S. South. In 2020, the Foundation committed $100 million in response to the national racial justice reckoning, directing resources to organizations aligned with community and movement priorities. At the same time, the Foundation underwent a strategic planning process that added equity as one of the Foundation’s values and also created a theory of change that further amplified its commitment to justice and equity.

The aggregate of these actions turbo-charged the Foundation’s vision for a just and equitable world and opened the aperture for more strategic grantmaking in the U.S. South.

The South sits at the heart of America’s unfinished struggle for racial justice and democracy. Its legacy of systemic exclusion is deeply rooted in racial justice histories and ongoing structural inequities shaped by slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, segregation, anti-Black violence, economic exploitation, and continued policy disparities. Addressing these complex landscapes requires locally grounded wisdom, long-term alliances, culturally literate engagement, and strategic influence—often afforded by proximity. Demographically, the South is home to more than half of the nation’s Black population—a reflection of enduring community ties and historical migration patterns that position the region at the center of America’s multiracial democratic future.

How do you describe your relationship to the South?

“Personally, whenever I’ve come to the South, it has been the place that has resonated with my spirit as being closest to home.” Knight grew up on the island of Jamaica. She continues: “people greet you when they walk by, you call your elders Miss and Mr. That is what I’m used to, that feels like home to me. And when I go there, there is a feeling of being amongst my people. People who understand you because you share a history, food ways, traditions that are just understood, accepted and embraced. In a nutshell, my relationship to the South feels like coming home to myself—there’s a familiarity there, so there’s ease in returning, and you mustn’t take that for granted and stay away too long.”

“Professionally, my relationship is growing and evolving. I live in California now, I work there so I don’t have the proximity that creates ease in relationships and sometimes I miss important context because I haven’t stayed present to all the news, especially today. This is why at the Foundation we engage amazing, place-rooted advisors, who are the connective tissue between us and our partners in the U.S. South.”

What did you hear from your listening sessions that surprised you, or pushed back on your assumptions?

“I started building out this work with some profound assumptions about the components of power building—strengthening the leadership and voices of those most affected by injustice. I thought the components of power-building largely looked the same everywhere. I was wrong. I also thought there is a tested rationale for regranting as an effective grantmaking strategy to optimize efficiencies and have a lot of knock-on benefits. I wasn’t completely wrong, but I learned that there is a time and a place for prioritizing efficiency, and that was an insufficient lens to inform this effort. And more substantively, I learned the critical role of mutual aid organizations as part of the ecosystem for power-building—where structural inequities, weakened social safety nets, and restrictive civic conditions converge, mutual aid networks have long filled the gaps left by state and market failure. These organizations work outside of the public and commercial systems to provide material support, such as food, health care, childcare, and housing, to those in need. They are the first responders to crises and lay the groundwork for long-term organizing and durable community power.”

“I also learned that relational organization is the currency for power building work, generally, but especially in the U.S. South, where organizing happens in third spaces, like the Mardi Gras ball, the fishy fry and so on. These are things I intuitively knew, but I understood it differently when I witnessed it.”

“Lastly, we have a tendency as funders to find the hero leaders, the folks that everybody else is funding, and pile on resources. That’s great, you should fund those solid anchors in communities and in our fields, and you know what, you should go a step further and ask them who makes their work successful and fund those folks too.” I learned that from Melanie Allen at HIVE Fund. Melanie is a woman about the South, so when she speaks, I listen.

Generations, Not Election Cycles

We are seeing a lot of shifts in the funding landscape right now and the Packard Foundation is clear-eyed about its commitment. Last year members of the Board of Trustees visited the South, driving from Memphis, Tennessee through the Mississippi Delta, to Jackson before ending their trip in New Orleans. All the while learning about the work, the people, the perseverance, and the history of movements that have impacted all of us for better and sometimes for worse. So, when Knight says: “at the Foundation, we understand that we don’t do equity work in election cycles. We do it in generations,” it is also a nod to the unwavering support she feels she has to work toward a country where everyone can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.

What keeps you going when the moment feels especially heavy?

“I’m navigating this time with a lot of resolve and a ton of prayers, because every time I see folks, they tell me they are praying for me. There is nothing better than being ‘prayed-up’ as my grandmother used to say. And when I come to the South, I’m fed, and when I leave folks call to check in on me and they introduce me to others for community. And that, that is sustenance.”

“I also know that Black and Brown folks have endured and overcome a lot of injustices in our country. And we have not stopped fighting because we believe in the aspirations of our country—that equity and justice are possible for all of us. We are always going to have to make demands of our country. We must not only criticize her; but we must also do our part to demonstrate a different set of possibilities that create opportunities for all of us to be well.”

Learn more at packard.org/initiative/us-racial-justice