Mildred Cotton Council (1929-2018) was a woman whose cooking and community activism cemented her legacy in North Carolina history.
Mildred Cotton Council (1929-2018) was a woman whose cooking and community activism cemented her legacy in North Carolina history.
Food has been a unifier for millennia, not just gathering people together to share a meal, but acting as a warm introduction to new histories and traditions. This February on Womanica, we’re celebrating Tastemakers - the Black chefs, cooks, and food historians who created new foodways and preserved important culinary stories of the past. The impact of chefs like Pig Foot Mary, Mama Dip, and Georgia Gilmore stretch far beyond the culinary scene - uplifting their local communities and inspiring those who came after them.
History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.
Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Chef Kia Damon.
I'm a Florida born chef, writer, host and recipe developer. I served as an executive Chef of New York City restaurant Lalito at the age of 24, and became Cherry Bombe magazine's first Culinary Director at 25. Since leaving I've founded Kia Feeds The People, a budding mutual aid effort. I’ll be your guest host for this month of Womanica.
This month, we’re talking about Tastemakers. We’re celebrating the Black chefs, cooks, and food historians who created new foodways and preserved important culinary stories of the past.
Today, we’re talking about a woman whose cooking and community activism cemented her legacy in North Carolina history. Let’s talk about Mildred Council – or, Mama Dip.
Mildred was born on April 11, 1929 in Chatham County, North Carolina. She was the youngest of seven siblings. When Mildred was almost two years old, her mother passed away. After that, her father raised the family on a farm that he leased from a sharecropper. That’s where Mildred earned the nickname ‘Dip.’ Even as a kid, she was so tall that when the water levels in the farm’s rain barrel were getting low, she could use her long arms to reach down to the very bottom and dip out a drink.
One day, when she was about nine years old, Mildred’s father asked her to fix the family something to eat. Mildred was overjoyed – she was already a pro at making mudpies to feed to her dolls. But this was her chance to cook something real. After her father got a taste of her cooking – peas, ham, cornbread, and an egg custard pie – he was so impressed that he let Mildred take charge of the family’s kitchen.
In her family’s kitchen, Mildred honed her cooking style, which she called ‘dump-cooking’. She cooked with her eye, measuring out ingredients by hand, and seasoning the food to taste rather than using specific measurements. To Mildred, dump cooking was also about using the freshest, ingredients – growing up, she sourced most of the food she cooked with directly from her family’s farm.
In 1945, Mildred moved with her family to Chapel Hill. She enrolled in cosmetology school, and worked at a beauty parlor for a few months, but eventually quit. She wanted to cook. So she started taking jobs where she could work in the kitchen. When she started out, she was often working in the kitchens of wealthy white families.
One day, while working in one of these homes Mildred cooked up a twist on sweet potatoes – mashing them with butter, corn syrup, and orange juice, and serving them in hollowed out oranges. She was scared the dish would get her fired, but everyone loved it. Their praise encouraged Mildred to start experimenting with and writing down her own recipes.
In 1947, Mildred married a man named Joe Council. Joe’s parents owned a restaurant in Chapel Hill, Bill’s Bar-B-Q. Mildred started working there, cooking barbecue alongside Joe’s mother Miss Mary, and getting a first-hand look at how to run a restaurant. She also started having her own children – eight in total!
During this period, Mildred was the main breadwinner in the family, often taking two or three jobs to make ends meet. She was a short order cook at Carolina Coffee Shop, she worked in the dining hall of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she was a chef for the university's fraternities.
In the 1970s, Mildred divorced her husband Joe, who had been abusing her for years. It was a moment she called “the biggest turning point in [her] life”. That same year, the first Black realtor in North Carolina gave Mildred an opportunity: there was a restaurant closing down in Chapel Hill. Did Mildred want to take it over? Mildred opened the restaurant with only 64 dollars – which was enough to buy ingredients for breakfast. With the profit she made from selling breakfast, she dashed out to buy lunch ingredients – and she did the same thing for dinner. She ended the day with 135 dollars.
She called the restaurant Dip’s Kitchen, and it quickly gained a reputation for authentic Southern country cooking – fried chicken, seasonal vegetables, and Mildred’s famous pecan pie.
Mildred cared deeply about helping people out. Her employees were often people recovering from addiction, or people recently released from prison. She also hired her own children and grandchildren to work for her – and many of them went on to own their own food businesses.
When Mildred wasn’t in Dip’s Kitchen, she was using food to forge community. She started an annual dinner that brought people of different races, religions, and backgrounds together. The dinner’s motto? “Sit down with a stranger, and make a new friend.” At one of those dinners, Mildred tasted the Jewish dish, kugel. She liked it so much she started making it, and included two kugel recipes in her second cookbook.
Over time, the business expanded. By 1999, Mildred had moved the restaurant across the street for more space. That same year, with encouragement from New York Times food editor and critic Craig Claiborne, Mildred published her first cookbook, Mama Dip’s Kitchen.
Mildred received national acclaim for her cooking: She was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, she got invited to the White House to meet President George W. Bush, and exchanged letters with President Barack Obama. But most days, you could find her in the kitchen of her restaurant, from open until close.
Mildred died on May 20, 2018. She was 89 years old. Today, her legacy lives on in her restaurant, which is still run by her family.
All month, we’re talking about tastemakers. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram @womanicapodcast.
Special thanks to Jenny and Liz Kaplan for letting me guest host this month of Womanica.
Talk to you tomorrow!