Leah Chase (1923–2019), New Orleans chef perfected Creole cuisine

Leah Chase was the "Queen of Creole Cuisine," the owner of the legendary Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans who fed presidents and made space for civil rights leaders to meet and plan the movement. She and her husband, jazz trumpeter Edgar "Dooky" Chase, took over his parents’ sandwich and lottery shop in the Treme neighborhood, and she used her background of working in French Quarter restaurants to build it up into a fine dining establishment for the black community in the days when New Orleans was still segregated. Dooky Chase was a popular gathering place whose prominent customers included the , James Baldwin, and , and wrote it into his song "Early Morning Blues." Credited with perfecting Creole cuisine, Chase was honored with the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, and Food & Wine magazine named Dooky Chase one of their 40 most important restaurants of the past 40 years. Chase was also an avid art collector with a notable collection of art by African-American artists, and her own portrait by Gustave Blache III hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.