Lawanda Jones, 62, who drove two hours with some friends to celebrate birthdays at The Lady and Sons, said many people in the South have worked hard to overcome its racist past.
“We have lived with each other and loved each other here for a long time,” said Mrs. Jones, who is white. “Sometimes I think there is more prejudice in the North than there is in the South.”
Ms. Deen, who was born in Albany, Ga., in 1947, is simply a product of her era, she and others said.
Ms. Deen’s great-grandfather had owned at least 30 slaves and she was born when Jim Crow laws meant cruel divisions even at the simplest levels. In Georgia, a black barber could be jailed for cutting a white person’s hair.
Students of Southern culture say that people like Ms. Deen learned a quiet, crippling system of polite etiquette to smooth the edges of segregation. While overt shows of racism are rare, it still persists.
“You still hear people talk that way if people think they are in a group of like-minded people,” said Richard Hattaway, 56, who lives just outside Savannah.