Paula Deen’s longtime black cook: ‘She didn’t treat me fairly’

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        Paula Deen’s longtime black cook: ‘She didn’t treat me fairly’

Source: www.today.com

Dora Charles and Paula Deen were soul sisters. That’s what Ms.  Deen called the black cook from the start, even before the books and the  television shows and the millions of dollars.

For 22 years, Mrs. Charles was the queen of the Deen  kitchens. She helped open the Lady & Sons, the restaurant here that made Ms.  Deen’s career. She developed recipes, trained other cooks and made sure  everything down to the collard greens tasted right.

“If it’s a Southern dish,” Ms. Deen once said, “you  better not put it out unless it passes this woman’s tongue.”

The money was not great. Mrs. Charles spent years  making less than $10 an hour, even after Ms. Deen became a Food Network star.  And there were tough moments. She said Ms. Deen used racial slurs. Once she  wanted Mrs. Charles to ring a dinner bell in front of the restaurant, hollering  for people to come and get it.

“I said, ‘I’m not ringing no bell,’ ” Mrs. Charles  said. “That’s a symbol to me of what we used to do back in the day.”

For a black woman in Savannah with a ninth-grade  education, though, it was good steady work. And Ms. Deen, she said, held out the  promise that together, they might get rich one day.

Now, Ms. Deen, 66, is fighting empire-crushing  accusations of racism, and Mrs. Charles, 59 and nursing a bad shoulder, lives in  an aging trailer home on the outskirts of Savannah.

“It’s just time that everybody knows that Paula Deen  don’t treat me the way they think she treat me,” she said.

The relationship between Mrs. Charles and Ms. Deen is  a complex one, laced with history and deep affection, whose roots can be traced  back to the antebellum South. Depending on whether Mrs. Charles or Ms. Deen  tells the story, it illustrates lives of racial inequity or benevolence.

Jessica B. Harris, a culinary scholar whose books have  explored the role of Africans in the Southern kitchen, said Ms. Deen and Mrs.  Charles are characters in a story that has been played out since slaves started  cooking for whites. “Peering through the window of someone else’s success when  you have been instrumental in creating that success is not a good feeling,” Ms.  Harris said. “Think about who made money from the blues.”

Ms. Deen ran a restaurant in a Best Western hotel when  Mrs. Charles, newly divorced and tired of fast-food kitchens, walked in and  auditioned by cooking her version of Southern food. Ms. Deen hired her  immediately.

Their birthdays are a day apart, so they celebrated  together. When Ms. Deen catered parties to survive until they could open the  Lady & Sons, Mrs. Charles hustled right beside her.

“If I lost Dora, I would have been devastated,” Ms.  Deen wrote in her 2007 memoir, “It Ain’t All About the Cooking.”

Early on, Mrs. Charles claims, Ms. Deen made her a  deal: “Stick with me, Dora, and I promise you one day if I get rich you’ll get  rich.”

Now, Mrs. Charles said, she wished she had gotten that  in writing. “I didn’t think I had to ’cause we were real close back then,” she  said.

That is where the two women’s stories diverge. Ms.  Deen, through her publicity team, offered a statement denying all of Mrs.  Charles’s accusations: “Fundamentally Dora’s complaint is not about race but  about money. It is about an employee that despite over 20 years of generosity  feels that she still deserves yet even more financial support from Paula Deen. ”

What is more, the document states, Ms. Deen “provided  guidance and support through the many ups and downs of Mrs. Charles’s life.”

Investigators for the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow  PUSH Coalition have spoken to Mrs. Charles. Robert Patillo, a lawyer for the  coalition, visited Savannah in June and July to interview Ms. Deen’s restaurant  employees, including Mrs. Charles, who still works at the Lady & Sons.

The 20 or so others Mr. Patillo spoke with were  divided on the conditions for black and white workers. Some said there was bias  against blacks, while others said the Lady & Sons was a terrific place to  work.

The Rainbow PUSH report said, “There was evidence of  systemic racial discrimination and harassment at the operations.” But, it went  on to say, “there is limited evidence of direct racism or racial discrimination”  by Ms. Deen…..more here

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