-
Leah Chase: Oh, this is beautiful.
-
Oh, gosh, I never saw such a room
-
and beauty and strength
like I'm looking at.
-
That's gorgeous. It is.
-
It is a beautiful room.
-
Pat Mitchell: I almost said your age,
because you gave me permission,
-
but I realized that I was
about to make you a year older.
-
You're only 94.
-
(Laughter)
-
(Applause)
-
LC: Yeah, I'm only 94.
-
(Applause)
-
I mean, you get this old
and parts start wearing out.
-
Your legs start wearing out.
-
The one thing that my children always say:
-
"But nothing happened to your mouth."
-
(Laughter)
-
So you've got to have something going,
so I've got my mouth going.
-
(Laughter)
-
PM: So Mrs. Chase,
the first time we were there,
-
I brought a group of young women,
who work with us at TED,
-
into the kitchen,
-
and we were all standing around
and you had already cooked lunch
-
for hundreds of people,
as you do every day,
-
and you looked up at them.
-
You have to share with this audience
what you said to those young women.
-
LC: Well, you know,
I talk to young women all the time,
-
and it's beginning to bother me,
-
because look how far I came.
-
I'd come with women
that had to really hustle and work hard
-
and they knew how to be women.
-
They didn't play that man down.
-
And, well, we didn't have
the education you have today,
-
and God, I'm so proud
-
when I see those women
with all that education under their belt.
-
That's why I worked hard,
-
tried to get everybody
to use those resources.
-
So they just don't know their power,
-
and I always tell them,
just look at my mother,
-
had 12 girls before she had a boy.
-
(Laughter)
-
So you know how I came out.
-
(Laughter)
-
Now, she had 14 children.
-
She raised 11 of us out of that 14,
-
and up until last year,
we were all still living,
-
a bunch of old biddies,
but we're still here.
-
(Laughter)
-
And sometimes we can be just cantankerous
and blah blah blah blah blah,
-
but we still go.
-
And I love to see women.
-
You don't know what it does for me
-
to see women in the position
that you're in today.
-
I never thought I'd see that.
-
I never sought I'd see women
-
be able to take places
and positions that we have today.
-
It is just a powerful thing.
-
I had a young woman come to me.
-
She was an African-American woman.
-
And I said, "Well, what do you do, honey?"
-
She said, "I am a retired Navy pilot."
-
Oh God, that just melted me,
-
because I knew how hard it was
to integrate that Navy.
-
You know, the Navy was the last thing
to really be integrated,
-
and that was done by Franklin Roosevelt
-
as a favor to an African-American man,
-
Lester Granger, that I knew very well.
-
He was the head of the National
Urban League back there,
-
and when Roosevelt asked him,
-
he wanted to appoint Lester
as maybe one of his cabinet members.
-
Lester said, "No, I don't want that.
-
All I want you to do
is integrate that Navy."
-
And that was what Franklin did.
-
Well, Franklin didn't live to do it,
-
but Truman did it.
-
But when this woman told me,
-
"I have flown everything there is to fly,"
-
bombers, just all kinds of planes,
-
it just melted me, you know,
-
just to see how far women have come.
-
And I told her, I said,
-
"Well, you could get
into the space program."
-
She said, "But Ms. Chase, I'm too old."
-
She was already 60-some years old,
-
and, you know, you're over the hill then.
-
(Laughter)
-
They don't want you flying
up in the sky at 60-something years old.
-
Stay on the ground.
-
When I meet women,
-
and today everybody comes to my kitchen,
-
and you know that,
-
and it upsets Stella, my daughter.
-
She doesn't like people
coming in the kitchen.
-
But that's where I am,
-
and that's where you're going
to see me, in the kitchen.
-
So when they come there,
I meet all kinds of people.
-
And that is the thing
that really uplifts me,
-
is when I meet women on the move.
-
When I meet women on the move,
it is good for me.
-
Now, I'm not one of these
flag-waving women.
-
You're not going to see me
out there waving.
-
No, I don't do that.
-
(Laughter)
-
No, I don't do that, and I don't want
any of you to do that.
-
Just be good women.
-
And you know, my mother taught us ...
-
she was tough on us,
-
and she said, "You know, Leah,"
-
she gave us all this plaque,
-
"to be a good woman,
you have to first look like a girl."
-
Well, I thought I looked like a girl.
-
"Act like a lady."
-
That, I never learned to do.
-
(Laughter)
-
"Think like a man.
-
Now don't act like that man.
Think like a man and work like a dog."
-
(Laughter)
-
So we learned that the hard way.
-
And they taught you that.
-
They taught you what women had to do.
-
We were taught that women
controlled the behavior of men.
-
How you act, they will act.
-
So you've got to do that,
and I tell you all the time.
-
You know, don't play this man down.
-
It upsets me when you may have a husband
-
that maybe he doesn't have as much
education under his belt as you have,
-
but still you can't play him down.
-
You've got to keep lifting him up,
-
because you don't want
to live with a mouse.
-
So you want that man to be a man
and do what he has to do.
-
And anyway, always remember,
-
he runs on cheap gas.
-
(Laughter)
-
So fill him up with cheap gas --
-
(Laughter)
-
and then, you got him.
-
It's just so --
-
(Laughter)
-
It's just --
-
PM: You have to give us
a minute to take that in.
-
(Laughter)
-
LC: When I heard this young lady
speak before I came out --
-
she was so beautiful,
-
and I wished I could be like that,
-
and my husband, poor darling --
-
I lost him after
we were married 70 years --
-
didn't agree on one thing,
-
never did, nothing,
-
but we got along together
-
because he learned to understand me,
-
and that was just hard,
-
because he was so different.
-
And that lady reminded me.
-
I said, "If I would have
just been like her,
-
Dooky would have really loved it."
-
(Laughter)
-
But I wasn't.
-
I was always pushy, always moving,
-
always doing this,
-
and he used to come to me
all the time, and he said,
-
"Honey, God's going to punish you."
-
(Laughter)
-
"You -- you're just not grateful."
-
But it isn't that I'm not grateful,
-
but I think, as long as you're living,
you've got to keep moving,
-
you've got to keep trying to get up
-
and do what you've got to do.
-
(Applause)
-
You cannot sit down.
-
You have to keep going,
-
keep trying to do a little bit every day.
-
Every day, you do a little bit,
-
try to make it better.
-
And that's been my whole life.
-
Well, I came up
in the country, small town,
-
had to do everything,
had to haul the water,
-
had to wash the clothes, do this, do that,
-
pick the dumb strawberries,
all that kind of stuff,
-
(Laughter)
-
but still, my daddy insisted
that we act nice,
-
we be kind.
-
And that's all.
-
When I heard this young woman --
-
oh, she sounds so beautiful --
-
I said, "I wish I could be like that."
-
PM: Mrs. Chase, we don't want you
to be any different than you are.
-
There is no question about that.
-
Let me ask you.
-
This is why it's so wonderful
to have a conversation
-
with someone who has a long view --
-
LC: A long time.
-
PM: to remembering Roosevelt
-
and the person he did that favor for.
-
What is in your head and your mind
-
and what you have seen and witnessed ...
-
One of the things that it's good
to remember, always,
-
is that when you opened that restaurant,
-
whites and blacks could not
eat together in this city.
-
It was against the law.
-
And yet they did, at Dooky Chase.
Tell me about that.
-
LC: They did, there.
-
Well, my mother-in-law first started this,
-
and the reason she started is,
-
because her husband was sickly,
and he would go out --
-
and people from Chicago
and all the places,
-
you would call his job a numbers runner.
-
But in New Orleans,
we are very sophisticated --
-
(Laughter)
-
so it wasn't a numbers runner,
-
it was a lottery vendor.
-
(Laughter)
-
So you see, we put class to that.
-
But that's how he did it.
-
And he couldn't go from house to house
to get his clients and all that,
-
because he was sick,
-
so she opened up
this little sandwich shop,
-
so she was going to take down the numbers,
-
because he was sick a lot.
-
He had ulcers. He was really bad
for a long a time.
-
So she did that --
-
and not knowing anything,
-
but she knew she could make a sandwich.
-
She knew she could cook,
-
and she borrowed 600 dollars
from a brewery.
-
Can you imagine starting
a business today with 600 dollars
-
and no knowledge of what you're doing?
-
And it always just amazed me
what she could do.
-
She was a good money manager.
-
That, I am not.
-
My husband used to call me
a bankrupt sister.
-
(Laughter)
-
"She'll spend everything you got."
-
And I would, you know.
-
PM: But you kept
the restaurant open, though,
-
even in those times of controversy,
when people were protesting
-
and almost boycotting.
-
I mean, it was a controversial move
that you and your husband made.
-
LC: It was, and I don't
know how we did it,
-
but as I said, my mother-in-law
was a kind, kind person,
-
and you didn't have any African-Americans
on the police force at that time.
-
They were all white.
-
But they would come around,
-
and she would say,
-
"[??], I'm gonna fix you
a little sandwich."
-
So she would fix them a sandwich.
-
Today they would call that bribery.
-
(Laughter)
-
But she was just that kind of person.
-
She liked to do things for you.
-
She liked to give.
-
So she would do that,
-
and maybe that helped us out,
-
because nobody ever bothered us.
-
We had Jim Dombrowski, Albert Ben Smith,
-
who started all kinds of things
right in that restaurant,
-
and nobody every bothered us.
-
So we just did it.
-
PM: Excuse me.
-
You talked to me that day
-
about the fact that people considered
the restaurant a safe haven
-
where they could come together,
-
particularly if they were working
on civil rights,
-
human rights,
-
working to change the laws.
-
LC: Well, because once
you got inside those doors,
-
nobody ever, ever bothered you.
-
The police would never come in
-
and bother our customers, never.
-
So they felt safe to come there.
-
They could eat, they could plan.
-
All the Freedom Riders,
-
that's where they planned
all their meetings.
-
They would come and we would
serve them a bowl of gumbo
-
and fried chicken.
-
(Laughter)
-
So I said, we'd changed
the course of America
-
over a bowl of gumbo
and some fried chicken.
-
(Applause)
-
I would like to invite the leaders, now,
-
just come have a bowl of gumbo
and some fried chicken,
-
talk it over and we'd go
and we'd do what we have to do.
-
(Applause)
-
And that's all we did.
-
PM: Could we send you a list
to invite to lunch?
-
(Laughter)
-
LC: Yeah, invite.
-
Because that's what we're not doing.
-
We're not talking.
-
Come together.
-
I don't care if you're a Republican
or what you are -- come together.
-
Talk.
-
And I know those old guys.
-
I was friends with those old guys,
-
like Tip O'Neill and all of those people.
-
They knew how to come together and talk,
-
and you would disagree maybe.
-
That's OK.
-
But you would talk and we would come
to a good thing and meet.
-
And so that's what we did
in that restaurant.
-
They would plan the meeting,
-
Oretha's mother, Oretha Haley's mother.
-
She was big in CORE.
-
Her mother worked for me for 42 years.
-
And she was like me.
-
We didn't understand the program.
-
Nobody our age understood this program,
-
and we sure didn't want
our children to go to jail.
-
Oh, that was ... oh God.
-
But these young people
were willing to go to jail
-
for what they believed.
-
We were working with Thurgood
and A.P. Tureaud and all those people
-
with the NAACP.
-
But that was a slow move.
-
We would still be out here trying
to get in the door, waiting for them.
-
(Laughter)
-
PM: Is that Thurgood Marshall
you're talking about?
-
LC: Thurgood Marshall.
But I loved Thurgood.
-
He was a good movement.
-
They wanted to do this
without offending anybody.
-
I'll never forget A.P. Tureaud:
-
"But you can't offend the white people.
-
Don't offend them."
-
But these young people didn't care.
-
They said, "We're going.
Ready or not, we're going to do this."
-
And so we had to support them.
-
These were the children we knew,
righteous children.
-
We had to help them.
-
PM: And they brought the change.
LC: And they brought the change.
-
You know, it was hard,
-
but sometimes you do
hard things to make changes.
-
PM: And you've seen
so many of those changes.
-
The restaurant has been a bridge.
-
You have been a bridge
between the past and now,
-
but you don't live in the past, do you?
-
You live very much in the present.
-
LC: And that's what you have to tell
young people today.
-
OK, you can protest,
-
but put the past behind you.
-
I can't make you responsible
for what your grandfather did.
-
That's your grandfather.
-
I have to build on that.
-
I have to make changes.
-
I can't stay there and say,
-
"Oh, well, look what they did to us then.
-
Look what they do to us now."
-
And you remember that,
-
but that makes you keep going on,
-
but you don't harp on it every day.
-
You move,
-
and you move to make a difference,
-
and everybody should be involved.
-
My children said,
-
"Mother, don't get political," you know.
-
(Laughter)
-
"Don't get political, because you know
we don't like that."
-
But you have to be political today.
-
You have to be involved.
-
Be a part of the system.
-
Look how it was when we couldn't be
a part of the system.
-
When Dutch Morial became the mayor,
-
it was a different feeling
in the African-American community.
-
We felt a part of things.
-
Now we've got a mayor.
-
We feel like we belong.
-
Moon tried before Dutch came.
-
PM: Mayor Landrieu's father,
Moon Landrieu.
-
LC: Mayor Landrieu's father,
he took great, great risks
-
by putting African-Americans in city hall.
-
He took a whipping for that
for a long time,
-
but he was a visionary,
-
and he did those things that he knew
what's going to help the city.
-
He knew we had to get involved.
-
So that's what we have to do.
-
We don't harp on that.
-
We just keep moving,
-
and Mitch, you know,
I tell Moon all the time,
-
"You did a good thing,"
-
but Mitch did one bigger than you
and better than you.
-
When he pulled those statues down,
-
I said, "Boy, you're crazy!"
-
(Applause)
-
You're crazy.
-
But it was a good political move.
-
You know, when I saw
P.T. Beauregard come down,
-
I was sitting looking at the news,
-
and it just hit me
what this was all about.
-
To me, it wasn't about race,
it was a political move.
-
And I got so furious,
-
I got back on that kitchen
the next morning,
-
and I said, come on, pick up
your pants and let's go to work,
-
because you're going to get left behind.
-
And that's what you have to do.
-
You have to move on people,
-
move on what they do.
-
It was going to bring
visibility to the city.
-
So you got that visibility --
move on it, uplift yourself,
-
do what you have to do,
-
and do it well.
-
And that's all we do.
-
That's all I try to do.
-
PM: But you just gave
the formula for resilience. Right?
-
So you are clearly the best example
we could find anywhere of resilience,
-
so there must be something you think --
-
LC: I like emotional strength.
-
I like people with emotional
and physical strength,
-
and maybe that's bad for me.
-
My favorite all-time general
was George Patton.
-
You know, that wasn't too cool.
-
(Laughter)
-
PM: It's surprising.
-
LC: I got George Patton
hanging in my dining room
-
because I want to remember.
-
He set goals for himself
-
and he was going to set out
to reach those goals.
-
He never stopped.
-
And I always remember his words:
-
"Lead, follow, or get out of the way."
-
Now, I can't lead --
-
(Applause)
-
I can't be a leader,
-
but I can follow a good leader,
-
but I am not getting out of the way.
-
(Applause)
-
If you can't lead --
-
leaders need followers,
-
so if I help you up there,
I'm going to ride on your coattails,
-
and I can't count
the coattails I've ridden upon.
-
(Laughter)
-
Feed you good. You'll help me out.
-
(Laughter)
-
And that's what life is all about.
-
Everybody can do something,
-
but please get involved.
-
Do something.
-
The thing we have to do
in this city, in all cities --
-
mommas have to start being mommas today.
-
You know?
-
They have to start understanding --
-
when you bring this child in the world,
-
you have to make a man out of it,
-
you have to make a woman out of it,
-
and it takes some doing.
-
It takes sacrifice.
-
Maybe you won't have the long fingernails,
maybe you won't have the pretty hair.
-
But that child will be on the move,
-
and that's what you have to do.
-
We have to concentrate on educating
-
and making these children understand
what it's all about.
-
And I hate to tell you, gentlemen,
-
it's going to take
a good woman to do that.
-
It's going to take
a good woman to do that.
-
(Applause)
-
Men can do that part.
-
The other part is to just do
what you have to do
-
and bring it home,
-
but we can handle the rest,
-
and we will handle the rest.
-
If you're a good woman, you can do that.
-
PM: You heard that first here.
-
We can handle the rest.
-
(Laughter)
-
Mrs. Chase, thank you so much --
-
LC: Thank you.
-
PM: for taking time out from the work
you do every day in this community.
-
LC: But you don't know
what this does for me.
-
When I see all of these people,
and come together --
-
people come to my kitchen
from all over the world.
-
I had people come from London,
-
now twice this happened to me.
-
First a man came, and I don't know
why he came to this --
-
Every year, the chefs do something
called "Chef's Charity."
-
Well, it so happened
I was the only woman there,
-
and the only African-American there
-
on that stage during these demonstrations,
-
and I would not leave until I saw
another woman come up there too.
-
I'm not going up -- they're going
to carry me up there
-
until you bring another woman up here.
-
(Laughter)
-
So they have another one now,
so I could step down.
-
But this man was from London.
-
So after that, I found the man
in my kitchen.
-
He came to my kitchen,
-
and he said, "I want
to ask you one question."
-
OK, I thought I was going to ask
something about food.
-
"Why does all these white men
hang around you?"
-
(Laughter)
-
What?
-
(Laughter)
-
I couldn't understand.
-
He couldn't understand that.
-
I said, "We work together.
-
This is the way we live in this city.
-
I may never go to your house,
you may never come to my house.
-
But when it comes to working,
-
like raising money
for this special school,
-
we come together.
-
That's what we do.
-
And still here comes another, a woman,
-
elegantly dressed,
-
about a month ago in my kitchen.
-
She said, "I don't understand
what I see in your dining room."
-
I said, "What do you see?"
-
She saw whites and blacks together.
-
That's what we do.
-
We meet. We talk.
-
And we work together,
-
and that's what we have to do.
-
You don't have to be my best friend
to work to better your city,
-
to better your country.
-
We just have to come together and work,
and that's what we do in this city.
-
We're a weird bunch down here.
-
(Laughter)
-
Nobody understands us,
-
but we feed you well.
-
(Laughter)
-
(Applause)
-
(Cheering)
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)
Raissa Mendes
I had the impression that she said "pans" and not "pants" here:
16:56.97
I got back on that kitchen
the next morning,
16:59.05
and I said, come on, pick up
your pants, and let's go to work,