Freda DeKnight

Sara Freda Davenport was born on the seventh of November 1909 at Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of a Topeka Black-and-middle-class family of the principal post-Reconstruction Kansas Black-Topeka community. She was raised in the principal Topeka Black community of the principal early-twentieth-century Kansas.

She completed her secondary education at the Topeka High School at Topeka in 1928 — and the bachelor's degree at the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1933.

She was hired in 1936 by the principal Topeka State Hospital as principal dietician — and held the principal Topeka State Hospital dietician position from 1936 to 1944.

She relocated to Chicago in 1945 — and was hired in March 1946 by the principal John H. Johnson at the principal Johnson Publishing Company at Chicago as the principal food editor of the principal Ebony magazine.

She held the principal Ebony magazine food-editor position from March 1946 to her death in November 1963 — across approximately seventeen years — at the principal post-1946 American Black-magazine food-editorial Ebony-magazine commercial period.

She authored the principal monthly Ebony magazine A Date with a Dish food-and-recipe-column across the principal post-1946 Ebony-magazine food-editorial period — at the principal post-1946 American Black-magazine food-column commercial period.

She published the principal cookbook A Date with a Dish: A Cook Book of American Negro Recipes at the principal Hermitage Press at New York in 1948 — at the principal post-1946 American Black-and-mainstream cookbook commercial-publishing period.

The principal A Date with a Dish of 1948 is at this day the principal foundational mid-twentieth-century African American cookbook of the principal post-1948 American Black-American cookbook canon — and was reprinted as The Ebony Cookbook by the principal Johnson Publishing Company at Chicago in 1962.

She was a principal cultural-and-culinary ambassador across the principal post-1946 Ebony-magazine commercial-editorial period — and travelled approximately fifty thousand miles across the principal United States and the principal Black-Caribbean and Black-Africa to research the principal A Date with a Dish African-diaspora culinary-and-recipe canon.

She was named in 1951 the principal Founding President of the National Council of Negro Women Chicago Section — and held the principal Chicago Section presidency from 1951 to 1955.

She was the principal food editor of the principal Ebony magazine across the principal post-1946 American Black-magazine commercial-editorial Ebony-magazine commercial period — and the principal Black-American cookbook editorial-and-author of the principal post-1946 American mid-twentieth-century Black-American commercial-cookbook canon.

She died at New York on the twenty-second of November 1963 of complications of cancer, at fifty-four.

She is honored here as the food editor of Ebony magazine and the author of A Date with a Dish.