The Paula Deen saga continues. Dora Charles opened up to the New York Times about working as a cook for the embattled chef.
The picture the former cook paints is pretty disturbing, including having to endure racial slurs and requests to dress up as a house servant, a la Aunt Jemima.
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.
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.”
A relative of Dora Charles, Ineta Jones, who also worked for Paula, claimed she expected her to dress up as a house servant at the restaurant.
Ms. Deen used Ms. Jones for restaurant theater. At 11 a.m., when the doors opened at the Lady & Sons, she stood in front and rang an iron dinner bell, something she had asked Mrs. Charles to do as well. An image of Ms. Jones doing just that was turned into a postcard sold at Paula Deen stores.
Ms. Jones was also in charge of making hoecakes, the cornmeal pancakes served to every guest. Ms. Deen had designed a station so diners could watch them being made. At both jobs, Mrs. Charles and other employees said, Ms. Deen wanted Ms. Jones to dress in an old-style Aunt Jemima outfit.
“Jellyroll didn’t want to hear that,” Mrs. Charles said. “She didn’t want to do that.”
In her statement, Ms. Deen said she had never asked anyone to dress like Aunt Jemima. Nor, she said, has she referred to Mrs. Charles and others using a racially offensive term for a black child, as Mrs. Charles claims.
Dora was instrumental in the success of Paula’s restaurant, Lady & Sons, and Paula promised she’d get rich right along side her, but the cook made less than $10 dollars an hour, even after Paula became wealthy. Now, she lives in a trailer park
Paula basically calls her former employee’s allegations an attempt at a money grab.
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.”
But Dora claims she’s not expecting a payday, “I’m not trying to portray that she is a bad person,” she said. “I’m just trying to put my story out there that she didn’t treat me fairly and I was her soul sister.”
