Anita Spring Council

Spring Council: Like Arminta said, I went there every day swimming. My brother Roy Cotton was a lifeguard. Some of the games we used to play was “Red Rover, Red Rover, Come Over,” and it was really fun. So, we had a high diving board and a low diving board. And I could jump off the low, so one day I decided I was going to jump off the high diving board. So, I stood in line for about twenty minutes. I got up there, climbed up, and I went to the edge. I looked down. I looked to the right and I looked up and down again. I looked at my brother who was lifeguarding that day. I looked down again. I looked at the people in line. I looked up at him again and he says, “Get down from there. Jump. Jump. Jump.” I just looked at him. He says, “Get down from there and don’t ever get up there again.” Trust me. I did not.

Spring Council: One thing we did do for Hargraves in order to get money to go swimming, we used to go–we called it “hunting for bottles.” Back then you’d get like maybe one cent, two cents, five cents for a bottle, and we would take it to Mr. Blackburn’s store and we would get enough money so we could go back and come for a swim. But I’m really proud to be in Chapel Hill. One thing that I remember too is the connection between the University of North Carolina community students coming to teach me how to swim and teach others. I have connections with a lot of folks from other cities that are surprised that my brother was a lifeguard and surprised that I can swim. And today I swim every week at UNC-Meadowmont to get my exercise in so I’m very appreciative of this facility for teaching me how to swim and being a great asset to the community. Thank you.

"Yeah our friends would be going to the ball games and going here and then we had to go to work. But then when it came down to going to McDonald’s or whatever we had the money to buy it and they didn’t, so that was the good part about it."

- Annette "Neecy" Council

Anita Spring Council and Annette “Neecy” Council discuss their family history and the restaurant Mama Dip’s Kitchen that their mother, Mildred Council, established and that the family operates today. They explain the history of the Council and Cotton families and discuss their early lives living across the street from St. Paul AME Church. They describe the impact of desegregation on their school experiences at Northside Elementary and Estes Hills, particularly feeling disconnected from the curriculum that largely ignored Black history and culture. In the 1970s, there were protests and disruptions at school led by older students, but they only got involved with freedom marches organized by the church.

Their grandfather owned Bill’s Bar-B-Que and they worked to assemble boxes of chicken for sale at football games. Their father owned a food truck and the family eventually reopened Bill’s Bar-B-Que, with everyone pitching in and working there. They discuss the ups and downs of working in the family business as a young person, and about their mother’s eventual decision to break up with her husband and start her own business, Dip’s Country Kitchen, where her children worked, even while in college. They discuss the nicknames in their family and where various family members live now, as well as their own children. Spring’s daughter owns Tanya’s Cookies, which was named one of Oprah Winfrey’s favorite things.

They discuss the ownership and changes in properties on Rosemary and Cotton Streets, and the landbank properties that the Jackson Center has assisted with. The family has held family reunions where Mrs. Council did a lot of the cooking, but as the restaurant grew more and more popular and busy, she had less time for those gatherings. They mention some of their favorite foods that their mother prepared and the kinds of things that they like to cook when they aren’t in the restaurant today. The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the restaurant as previous recessions and other hardships had, and the Council sisters explain how their mother’s determination to keep going “no matter what was going on” inspired them to keep going during this latest set of challenges. The restaurant has hired work release employees from the prison system and they discuss how hard those employees have worked, and an incident in which an inmate escaped after working and their mother had to fight to keep their work release employees on the job. Mama Dip’s has also hired Burmese refugees, and they discuss their mother’s teaching methods for showing someone how to bake her recipes, in spite of a language barrier. After Mildred Council died, the family kept the restaurant going with ease because she had prepared them all so well with a deep understanding of every aspect of the restaurant’s operations. Long-time customers came to pay their respects. They talk about Mrs. Council providing food for seniors in the community, gardening to provide vegetables for the restaurant, seasonal cooking, and the current staffing of the restaurant. The sisters grew up attending St. Paul AME Church and, later, Hamlet Chapel, their mother’s home church. Eventually, they had to change the name from Dip’s Country Kitchen to Mama Dip’s Kitchen due to a trademark on the term “country kitchen,” but they explain that people knew the restaurant as Mama Dip’s by then anyway, and so the name change was easy to make. Mrs. Council was able to secure a loan for the new restaurant space and paid it off within seven years, thanks to its success and to her sales of cookbooks, including sales on QVC.

Mrs. Council started the Mama Dip’s Share the Love Fund to support organizations that provide programs for children, and the sisters talk about how their mother responded to her sudden fame. Mrs. Council got her nickname due to her height, being the only one in the family tall enough to dip water out of the well. They discuss how food and cooking connect people and remind people of their own family’s food traditions. “Food is about giving and nurturing.”