“Sit down with a stranger and leave with a friend” is the slogan for the yearly Mildred Council Community Dinner. The 24th annual event, which will honor Council’s legacy, will take place in the McDougle Middle School cafetorium on April 28.
Nerys Levy, chair of the event, said the purpose of the dinner is to bring the community together through food and entertainment while fostering cultural and socioeconomic representation. Over the course of two decades, the dinners have involved around 22,000 people, she said.
“It’s actually a pretty dynamic event and always reflects the current community we have in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Orange County and beyond,” Levy said.
Levy said the event was originally established to celebrate Black History Month, but it quickly developed into a multicultural event of inclusion.
This year, there will be 21 food donors including Mama Dip’s Kitchen, which provides the main meal for the event every year. Entertainment for this year’s dinner will include Venezuelan Dance Group NC, Bull City Saxophone Quartet, gospel singer Earl Bynum and theatre group 1,2,3 Puppetry.
Aaron Keck, the morning DJ on 97.9 WCHL, has attended the event in the past. He said the dinner is an opportunity for the entire community to be in the same room at the same time.
Keck said the dinner brings a sense of tradition to the community and allows for community bonding without the pressure of addressing urgent issues.
“For any community to survive and thrive and to be the sort of community that you want to be in and want to live in, you need that solidarity and you need those communal ties and bonds, and this is a really simple way of accomplishing that,” Keck said.
The dinner honors the late Mildred "Mama Dip" Council and her legacy in the community. As the founder of Mama Dip’s Kitchen, Council was a community activist who always included people from different backgrounds at her tables and in her kitchen, Levy said.
