Freda DeKnight

DeKnight's obituary appeared in the August 1963 issue of Negro Digest. It was titled "Tribute To A Lady Titan." Noting her role in revamping the image of African-Americans in the public sphere, the writer called DeKnight "a familiar figure at professional food and fashion gatherings where Negroes had been seen before only as servants." She opened the door to career choices for future generations.

In 1962, DeKnight's husband took her on a vacation-business trip to Hawaii and Japan where she selected fashions for the 1962 production of the Ebony Fashion Fair "The fashion Fair With An Oriental Flair."

In 1960, Freda DeKnight underwent surgery for cancer. Still, she continued to travel with the fashion fair until 1962, when advancing illness left her increasingly weakened. She died in 1963 at age 53.

DeKnight didn't limit her celebration of African-American culture to the culinary world. She rose to the position of home service director at Johnson Publishing, home of Ebony. And in 1957, she staged the first Ebony Fashion Fair, "stirring Negro culture" into international haute couture. She would oftentimes appear on television, demonstrating recipes like violet-petal cake, and scouted the country for models for the pages of Ebony.

In 1948, DeKnight published her only cookbook, A Date with A Dish: A Cookbook of American Negro Recipes. It is considered the first major cookbook written by an African-American for an African-American audience. Through Ebony, DeKnight reminded readers of the multinational roots of Southern cooking and the ingenuity so often displayed in the cuisine, an ingenuity that transcended the poverty from which traditional Southern cooking had emerged.

In 1948, DeKnight published her only cookbook, titled A Date with a Dish. Subsequent editions were branded as The Ebony Cookbook, but in 2014 the book was reissued with its original title.

After college, Freda DeKnight traveled to New York, where she attended classes at Columbia University and New York University. She also worked teaching sewing and as a guidance counselor to vocational training schools in Manhattan including Yorkville High School, where she met René DeKnight, the arranger and pianist for The Delta Rhythm Boys who would become her husband in 1940. In 1946, DeKnight took a position as food editor for Ebony magazine, making her the first African-American food editor in the United States. The story goes that DeKnight prepared a meal at which publisher John H. Johnson was present, and she impressed him by sending the menu he requested after greatly enjoying the meal to him in a creative, narrative style that made it seem fun to cook. She continued to use this creativity in her column, with formats such as cooking directions appearing as photo captions. DeKnight published a regular column in the magazine called “A Date with a Dish.” Her husband, noted jazz pianist Rene DeKnight came up with the column's title. As the first food editor for Ebony magazine, DeKnight wrote a photo-driven monthly column that offered her home economist's tips, as well as regional recipes from the “Negro community” of home cooks, professional chefs, caterers, restaurateurs and celebrities

Freda DeKnight (1909–1963) was the first food editor of Ebony magazine and the author of A Date With A Dish: A Cookbook of American Negro Recipes, considered the first major cookbook written by an African-American for an African-American audience. She was a pioneer for the working class, who was able to articulate an unmatched love of food. DeKnight's legacy lives on through the continued use of her cook book.

Freda Alexander was born in December 1909 while her mother, Elenore Alexander, a nurse from Boston, was traveling near Topeka, Kansas. Two years later her father, who was a steward on the Santa Fe Railroad, passed away, so her mother, a traveling nurse, sent Freda and her sister to live with a South Dakota farming family. The Scotts not only raised livestock and crops, but they also ran the most successful catering business in the area. Freda soon developed a passionate interest in cooking, which was nurtured by her adoptive family. DeKnight later recalled that the Scotts “were the inspiration for my early cooking aspirations, which gave me every opportunity to absorb all their fine recipes and rudiments of cooking, preparing food, and catering. Although Mama Scott’s education was limited, she could measure and estimate to perfection without any modern aids.” Later on, DeKnight would turn her love for cooking into a living. After she studied home economics at Dakota Wesleyan University, she moved to New York on a whim and began her tenure at Ebony in 1944.