![Reginald McKnight](/sites/default/files/2022-08/Reginald%20McKnight_0.jpg)
Reginald McKnight, Hamilton Holmes Professor of English
Hamilton E. Holmes was born in Atlanta on July 8, 1941. The son of a businessman and school teacher, he was the oldest of five children who grew up in a middle-classed family that stressed education. Every member of his family for three preceding generations had been a college graduate, as well as each child of Holmes’ generation. While lettering in football, basketball, and track in high school, Dr. Holmes was also valedictorian.
After attending Morehouse College for a year, Dr. Holmes transferred to the University of Georgia. Along with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, he was one of the first two African-American students at the University of Georgia. Despite a constant barrage of attention and racially motivated hostility, he graduated
Phi Beta Kappa from UGA in 1963. He would go on to be the first African-American student to enter Emory University’s School of Medicine, graduating in 1967.
A respected orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta, Dr. Holmes was the Associate Dean at Emory’s School of Medicine and Chairman of the orthopedic unit at Grady Memorial Hospital.
![Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault at UGA](/sites/default/files/inline-images/Holmes%20and%20Hunter.jpg)
In August of 1983, Dr. Holmes became the first African American to be named a trustee for the University of Georgia Foundation. Along with Hunter-Gault, Dr. Holmes was awarded UGA’s Bicentennial Medal in 1985. In 1993, the University bestowed its Distinguished Alumni Merit Award upon Dr. Holmes.
Dr. Reginald McKnight, a professor in the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences’ English Department, has served as the inaugural holder of the Hamilton E. Holmes Professorship since 2002.