Date with a Dish, A.
Inscribed To Marian Anderson
[Cookbooks]. de Knight, Freda [Celeste]. A Date with a Dish: A Cookbook of American Negro Recipes. New York: Hermitage Press, (1948).
8vo.; brown cloth, stamped in dark red; pictorial dust-jacket, extremities lightly chipped.
First edition: Matthews, 100. An early work of black American cultural history, bearing an intriguing presentation from the author to famed black American contralto: For Marian Anderson, if my food would or could compare with your voice—I could achieve great things—But with beauty in music and beauty in foods, we can understand each other. Sincerely, Freda de Knight.
Freda Celeste de Knight (1900-1963), a Dakota-born graduate of Wesleyan University, worked briefly as an Urban League caseworker before assuming the title of Cooking Editor of Ebony magazine in 1946. De Knight spent over twenty years as a lecturer, food critic, and food demonstrator. Date with a Dish, her coyly titled magnum opus, was intended to disprove the notion that blacks “could only adapt themselves to the standard Southern dishes, such as Fried Chicken, Corn Pone or Hot Breads” (introduction). To refute this bit of provincial “knowledge” de Knight gathered eclectic menus “from Negro sources [in]...all forty-eight states.” The anthology includes a contribution from Duke Ellington, whose recipe for “fluffy and light” scrambled eggs, de Knight assured readers, was “definitely a collector’s item.”
Marian Anderson (1902-1993) rose from obscurity in Philadelphia to become one of America’s most celebrated singers. In 1939 she attained national prominence when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her permission to sing in Washington D.C.’s Constitutional Hall. Eleanor Roosevelt personally helped to organize an alternate “protest” concert, during which Anderson sang from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; the Easter 1939 event was attended by more than 75,000 and indelibly established Anderson as a modern day symbol of the civil rights movement.
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