Edna Lewis

Edna Lewis was born on the thirteenth of April 1916 at the Freetown community of Orange County, Virginia, the daughter of Chester Lewis — a Freetown Black farmer — and Daisy Lewis. She was raised in the principal Freetown community — a settlement founded in 1865 by her enslaved grandparents at the principal post-emancipation Freetown freed-Black-Virginia community.

She completed her elementary education at the Freetown community school and relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1932 — at the principal post-1932 Great-Depression-era Black-Virginia-to-Washington-D.C. migration period. She worked across the principal 1930s as a Washington domestic and at the principal Brooklyn New York Ironing Board commercial-laundress community in 1938.

She relocated to New York in 1940 — and joined the principal Communist Party of the United States of America New-York branch in 1942. She worked across the principal early-1940s as a window-dresser at the principal Bonwit Teller and Lord and Taylor department stores at Manhattan.

She was named the principal chef-and-co-owner of the principal Café Nicholson at 323 East 58th Street at Manhattan in 1948 — alongside the principal Charleston-South-Carolina antique-dealer Johnny Nicholson. She held the principal Café Nicholson head-chef position from 1948 to 1954.

The principal Café Nicholson Edna-Lewis-Black-Southern-cuisine residency of the principal post-1948 period included as principal patrons Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Howard Hughes, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Roosevelt, Greta Garbo, and Tallulah Bankhead.

She published her first cookbook The Edna Lewis Cookbook at the principal Bobbs-Merrill Press at New York in 1972 — and her second cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking at the principal Alfred A. Knopf at New York in 1976.

The principal Taste of Country Cooking of 1976 is at this day the principal foundational cookbook of the principal post-1976 American Black-Southern-culinary canon — and was selected in 1993 by the principal James Beard Foundation as one of the principal twenty-five best cookbooks of the principal twentieth century.

She was the principal chef-and-consultant of the principal Brooklyn Gage and Tollner restaurant from 1988 to 1992 — and held the principal post-1988 American Black-Southern-culinary commercial-and-academic-residency leadership.

She was awarded the principal James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

She died at Decatur, Georgia on the thirteenth of February 2006 of natural causes, at eighty-nine.

She is honored here as the author of The Taste of Country Cooking.