On April 11, 1929, Mildred Edna Cotton Council was born on a sharecropping farm in the Baldwin Township of Chatham County to Ed and Effie Edwards Cotton. She was the granddaughter of an enslaved couple, growing up a Black girl in the time of Jim Crow, who would later become a staple of southern cooking.

    In her childhood, she acquired the nickname “Dip” because her tall frame of six feet two inches and long arms allowed her to “dip” to the bottom of the rain barrel. This nickname stuck, later becoming a brand in her culinary pursuits as “Mama Dip.”

     Council first began cooking as a child by watching family. The style Mama Dip grew up on is called “dump-cooking” which promotes cooking by taste. This style also does not require recipes. Council measured ingredients in her hands and continued experimenting until the dish tasted right. Council’s skills in the kitchen further developed when she was nine in the wake of her mother’s death when she was only two years old. Her father allowed her in the kitchen and was thoroughly impressed with her skills. From there on out, she took over the cooking for her father and six siblings while also working on the farm originally growing corn and cotton though later transitioning to tobacco.

     In 1944, Council was in tenth grade and moved with her family to Chapel Hill due to both a dispute with the Agricultural Department and one of Council’s sisters falling ill. After the move, Council did not return to school but later attended nine months of beauty school in Durham. This resulted in Council’s first job outside the home where she worked in a beauty shop on Franklin Street.

     Council’s first job in the cooking industry was with Mrs. Patterson, a white woman, who was thoroughly impressed with her cooking. One day Mrs. Patterson asked for sweet potatoes. Council presented Mrs. Patterson with mashed boiled sweet potatoes, butter, Karo syrup and orange juice scooped into hollowed out orange rinds. This creativity could have gotten her fired but instead it became Council’s first original recipe.

      In 1947, at 18 years of age, Mama Dip married Joe Council and began working with him at Bill’s Bar-B-Q in Chapel Hill. Later, Council worked out of a food truck opened by her husband. From there, Council worked in kitchens all over Chapel Hill including Carolina Coffee Shop, St. Andrews Hall and a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fraternity house. While working at the fraternity house, Council befriended a student named Charles Kuralt who would go on to become the youngest ever CBS News correspondent, winning three Peabody Awards and 12 Emmys for his work. Kuralt was the first of many connections Council would make during her time in Chapel Hill.

     In 1976, Council divorced her husband after being married for 29 years.

     In 1976, Council also opened her first restaurant with the help of Chapel Hill’s only Black real estate agent. Her first restaurant, Dip’s Kitchen, took over the building of a failing diner. During her first restaurant run, Council had very little money. She started with $40 to buy breakfast food and $24 for change. After breakfast, she used what she made to go buy lunch ingredients. She would repeat this process for dinner.

    By 1999, Dip’s Kitchen was successful enough to move across the street into a larger space somewhere along the way the restaurant also changed names to simply “Mama Dip’s.” With the move, Council was able to employ more workers including her children, grandchildren and people who needed help including those recovering from substance abuse or recently released from prison.

     Council’s giving attitude did not stop there. Council created an annual community dinner at her restaurant with the tagline “sit down with a stranger and make a new friend.” The dinners were originally created to bring together Black and white people, but later the mission expanded to include people of different cultures and religions.

     Council’s work in the restaurant industry and attention to helping others attracted the attention of President George W. Bush who invited her to the White House. Later in life, President Barack Obama would also notice Council. Council and President Obama exchanged letters in the later part of her life. 

     Along the way, Council’s restaurant attracted many influential people in Chapel Hill including Michael Jordan and James Worthy who at the time were both students at the University of North Carolina and frequently ate at Dip’s Kitchen. 

     Craig Claiborne, a food writer for The New York Times, was also blown away by Council’s cooking. Claiborne went on to heavily promote her cooking, frequently writing positively about her restaurant and reprinting her recipes. He also was the one to encourage Council to write her own cookbook. 

     Council had a difficult time creating her cookbook as she had never written any recipes down. In the end, her cookbook, Mama Dip’s Kitchen, took 10 years to complete. The book was published by the University of North Carolina Press and sold a quarter million copies.

     From there, Council's brand expanded. Council went on to publish another cookbook titled Mama Dip’s Family Cookbook. She also put out a line of food products marketed with the saying “put a little south in your mouth.”

     Council passed away on May 20, 2018; however, her southern cooking legacy will not soon be forgotten. Along with the survival of her still very popular restaurant, many of her children and grandchildren work in the food business. Her work in the food industry not only impacted the food scene of Chapel Hill but also helped promote southern cooking on a national scale.