[3] 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.

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.

[5] 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 [9] In 1948, DeKnight published her only cookbook, A Date with A Dish: A Cookbook of American Negro Recipes.

DeKnight shared poignant, humorous moments gleaned from interviews with celebrities, as well as their favorite recipes, such as Louis Armstrong's beloved ham hocks and red beans.

“No need to make folks think I like fancy foods like quail on toast, chicken and hot biscuits, or steak smothered in mushrooms.

Of course they taste good and I can eat them, but have you ever tried ham hocks and red beans?” -Louis Armstrong, as quoted in A Date with a Dish [6] Ultimately, DeKnight set her sights not on writing a great cookbook (though she did, and it became a bestseller).

She states in the preface of A Date with a Dish, “It is a fallacy, long disproved, that Negro cooks, chefs, caterers and homemakers can adapt themselves only to the standard Southern dishes….Like other Americans living in various sections of the country, they have naturally shown a desire to become versatile in the preparation of any dish.”[5] The Paris Review state that "DeKnight presented a more nuanced and often glamorous image of African-American cooking and culture—not just to African-American readers, but to the broader world.” [9] DeKnight's efforts helped people across the country to see Southern cooking as phenomenon of cultural assimilation, and to see food as a potential means for climbing out of poverty.

I feel that I have a professional relationship with De Knight because she represents the journalists who used their columns in magazines and newspapers to keep home cooks up on the latest food trends.

Like De Knight, I had a middle class upbringing, and I also became the first African American woman to be the food editor of a major daily newspaper—The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

'[12] Without De Knight's work, we'd still be operating under the status quo argument that African American cuisine is represented by a narrow spectrum of food.

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."