Jitu Weusi: Her name was Lottie Brown, and the Lord sent her to us. When we first opened we had mass confusion in the kitchen, with everybody talking about how they could cook – they couldn’t cook. We were going crazy, we had to find somebody. I was living on Claver Place at the time and I went around there to Claver Place one afternoon and I had my head down. This woman said ‘what’s wrong with you, you act like you got the blues, you got your head all down…’ I said ‘oh, Miss Lottie, how you doin’, I need a cook…’ She said ‘oh, you do?’ She said ‘well, I used to be a cook. I used to work in a restaurant.’ I said ‘oh, will you come around [to The East] and cook?’ She said ‘well, I tell you what, I need $125 a week.’ I said ‘we don’t make but $50 a week, where we gonna get $125?’ She said, ‘well, if I’m going to do it, that’s what I want.’

So we discussed it and we agreed that we would pay her the $125 a week. Well that was one of the best moves that we made. She came around, took hold of that kitchen, she moved people around – she had this one doing this, that one doing that; she had people whose only job was peel and cut potatoes. Then she another one whose only job was clean greens, wash greens, cook greens… In a month’s time she had that kitchen humming. We used to produce sometime 300-400 plates of food per night! That’s a lot of food coming out of one little kitchen a night, but it was only because of her that we were effective in doing that. Food became a major way that we earned money through The East to pay for our expenses.