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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–36.Back to highlights
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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1970s
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The Pegasus, a gay bar, operates in the former Cave on West Franklin Street
In 1972 the basement bar once called the Cave, under the Record and Tape Center near Carrboro, ran as the Pegasus, a gay bar with a jukebox and a back room for dancing. A letter in the Daily Tar Heel called it defunct by February 1973.
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The Carolina Gay Association forms
Students who had met weekly since February 1974 as the Gay Awareness Rap Group won recognition from UNC's Dean of Student Affairs in early September 1974 and took the name Carolina Gay Association. The group met in Craige dormitory and in 1976 sponsored the first Southeastern Gay Conference.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 1980s
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Joe Herzenberg wins election to the Chapel Hill Town Council
Joe Herzenberg placed third in the four-seat Town Council race at the municipal election of November 3, 1987, with 3,308 votes, behind Nancy Preston and Roosevelt Wilkerson, and said he was the first openly gay elected official in the history of North Carolina. He was sworn in at the Council's organizational meeting on December 7, 1987, with his neighbor Lightning Brown administering the oath.
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LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro
Joe Herzenberg's election to the Chapel Hill Town Council in November 1987 made him North Carolina's first openly gay elected official. Carrboro created a domestic partnership registry in September 1994 and Chapel Hill followed in 1995, and in November 1995 Carrboro elected Mike Nelson, the state's first openly gay mayor.
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Mike Nelson loses his first race for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen by 32 votes
Nelson first ran for elected office in 1989 and lost his bid for a seat on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen by 32 votes.
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Jacquelyn Gist is sworn in as a Carrboro alderman
Robin Lackey administered the oath of office to alderman-elect Jacquelyn Gist at the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 5, 1989. The board had approved the abstract of votes cast at the November 7, 1989 election earlier in the same meeting, at which Eleanor Kinnaird was also sworn in as mayor.
- 1990s
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Carrboro's LGBTQ municipal firsts
From the 1990 equal employment policy and the 1994 domestic partnership ordinance, through Mike Nelson's mayoralty and Lydia Lavelle's, to the 2021 nondiscrimination ordinance: the town acts that made Carrboro a series of firsts.
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Carrboro adds sexual orientation to its equal employment opportunity policy
The Board of Aldermen unanimously amended the town's personnel ordinance to add sexual orientation to the characteristics protected in its merit principle and equal employment opportunity policy. On November 13, 1990 the Board had written a sexual orientation nondiscrimination clause into a planning grant agreement with the City of Durham and asked for the code amendment to be scheduled.
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Baptist conventions disassociate from Binkley
State and Southern conventions acted after the church licensed an openly gay ministerial candidate.
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Mike Nelson is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Nelson won a seat on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1993, and as an alderman he championed the domestic partners ordinance the town adopted in 1994.
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Perry Deane Young speaks at Chapel Hill High School after gay-authored books are pulled from a reading list
After four gay- and lesbian-authored books were pulled from an English teacher’s multicultural reading list at Chapel Hill High School, Young and author Susan Johnson spoke at an evening program there and joined a panel. The Orange Lesbian and Gay Association and Many Voices, One Community sponsored it.
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Carrboro Board of Aldermen adopts a domestic partnership registry
The Board voted unanimously to amend the Town Code so that statements of domestic partnership could be filed with the Town Clerk, set the effective date at October 11, 1994, added a $40 registration fee, and extended the financial disclosure required of elected officials to cover their domestic partners. The Board took no action on a third proposal to extend health insurance benefits to domestic partners of town employees.
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Chapel Hill creates a domestic partner registry
The Town of Chapel Hill established a domestic partner registry in 1995, the year after Carrboro adopted its own. The Town added sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to its employment protections in 2004.
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Carrboro votes to pay for domestic partner coverage in its employee health plan
Setting town employee health insurance for fiscal 1995-96, the Board of Aldermen voted that the town would bear any expense of adding coverage for domestic partners to its Kaiser plan, after asking staff on May 23 to find out why the insurer Healthsource did not offer such coverage. The vote was six to one, with Michael Nelson opposed.
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Mike Nelson is elected mayor of Carrboro
Michael R. Nelson, then a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, won the mayor's race at the municipal election held on November 7, 1995, becoming the first openly gay mayor elected in North Carolina. The Board approved the Orange County abstract of votes from that election at its meeting of December 5, 1995.
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Mike Nelson is sworn in as mayor of Carrboro
At the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 5, 1995, outgoing mayor Eleanor Kinnaird gave closing remarks and Mayor-elect Michael R. Nelson took the oath of office, along with aldermen-elect Jay Bryan, Hilliard Caldwell and Alex Zaffron. The Board then appointed Diana McDuffee to the alderman seat Nelson vacated.
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Perry Deane Young writes a column for the Chapel Hill Herald
Young, a Vietnam War correspondent and author, wrote a column for the Chapel Hill Herald from 1996 to 2003.
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Mayor Mike Nelson proclaims June Lesbian and Gay Pride Month in Carrboro
At the Board of Aldermen meeting of June 3, 1997, Mayor Michael Nelson issued a proclamation naming June Lesbian and Gay Pride Month in the Town of Carrboro.
- 2000s
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Mark Kleinschmidt serves on the Chapel Hill Town Council
Kleinschmidt was elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2001 and served until 2009. He was executive director of the Fair Trial Initiative and a former board president of the state ACLU affiliate.
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Orange County votes to extend health benefits to domestic partners
At a November 20, 2003, work session, the Orange County commissioners voted unanimously to extend employee health benefits to domestic partners. The county's insurance trust could not add them for January 2004, so the county budgeted the cost in 2004 and coverage for partners of county employees began January 1, 2005.
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Mike Nelson presides over his last meeting as mayor of Carrboro
At the December 6, 2005 meeting the Board of Aldermen approved the November 8 election results, in which Mark Chilton defeated Alex Zaffron for mayor, 1,337 to 776, and outgoing Mayor Michael Nelson gave his parting comments.
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Mike Nelson serves on the Orange County Board of Commissioners
Nelson placed third of seven candidates in the May 2, 2006 primary for three county commissioner seats and went on the November ballot; his papers date his service as a commissioner to 2006 through 2009.
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Lydia Lavelle is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
In her first run for office Lavelle led the field of aldermen candidates with 1,656 votes, about 25 percent, ahead of two-term incumbent Joal Hall Broun and Dan Coleman. She lived in the northern part of town Carrboro had recently annexed, and Mayor Mark Chilton read her first-place finish as a sign that voters were ready to move past the annexation fight.
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Commissioner Mike Nelson announces he will not seek re-election
County Commissioner and former Carrboro mayor Mike Nelson announced that he would not run for re-election to the Orange County board.
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Mark Kleinschmidt is elected mayor of Chapel Hill
Kleinschmidt won 4,006 votes to Matt Czajkowski's 3,766 with all 21 precincts reporting, succeeding Kevin Foy, who had endorsed him. He was Chapel Hill's first openly gay mayor and the third openly gay man elected mayor in North Carolina, after Mike Nelson in Carrboro.
- 2010s
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Lydia Lavelle takes office as Carrboro mayor, the first openly lesbian mayor in North Carolina
Lydia Lavelle, who ran unopposed for mayor in the fall 2013 election, was sworn in on December 3, 2013 as North Carolina's first openly lesbian mayor. Aldermen Randee Haven-O'Donnell, Sammy Slade and Jacquelyn Gist were sworn in for new terms at the same meeting.
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Mark Chilton wins the register of deeds primary on a same-sex marriage pledge
Chilton took just over 42 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, beating the incumbent register of deeds, Deborah Brooks, and a second challenger. He had campaigned on a promise to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite the state ban, and because no Republican filed, the primary settled the office.
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Same-sex couples begin receiving marriage licenses in Orange County
A federal judge struck down North Carolina's ban on same-sex marriage late on Friday, October 10, 2014, by which time the Orange County Register of Deeds office in Hillsborough had closed for the day. The office issued its first licences to same-sex couples when it reopened on Monday, October 13, with Carrboro mayor Lydia Lavelle and Alicia Stemper first in line; the two married at the Carrboro Town Commons on October 25, 2014.
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Mark Kleinschmidt leaves the Chapel Hill mayor's office
Kleinschmidt served as mayor from his election in November 2009 until 2015.
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Carrboro Board of Aldermen calls for the repeal of House Bill 2 at a Saturday special meeting
Three days after the General Assembly passed and Governor Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2, the Board met in special session and adopted a resolution affirming the dignity of LGBT people, calling for the law's repeal and urging other North Carolina governments to use it as a model, then adopted a second resolution condemning by name the legislators and governor who enacted it. Both passed six to none with Jacquelyn Gist absent, and the Board asked staff to raise the town's rainbow pride flags on March 28.
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Mark Kleinschmidt is elected Orange County clerk of superior court
Kleinschmidt was first elected clerk of superior court in 2018 and has held the office since. The state judicial branch says that in the post he has worked to strengthen court services and the administration of guardianship matters.
- 2020s
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Carrboro Town Council adopts a nondiscrimination ordinance covering sexual orientation and gender identity
Six weeks after the state's moratorium on local employment and public accommodation ordinances expired on December 1, 2020, the Council unanimously adopted Ordinance No. 10/20-21, adding to Chapter 8 of the Town Code a ban on discrimination in employment and places of public accommodation that covers sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. The ordinance took effect on adoption and cited the town's March 26, 2016 pledge to seek such protections.
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Lydia Lavelle announces she will not seek a fifth term as Carrboro mayor
After four terms as mayor and fourteen years in town office, Lavelle said she would not run again, saying that to everything there is a season and that she looked forward to what came next.
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Carrboro honors Jacquelyn Gist after 32 years on its governing board
Gist, who lost her seat in the 2021 municipal election, was honored by the council for more than three decades of service. Kept away by COVID-19 concerns, she sent a recorded statement saying she had spent 32 years working so that everyone who came to Carrboro would feel the same sense of place and home she had found there.
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Carrboro honors Lydia Lavelle as Damon Seils is sworn in as mayor
At the council's meeting the town honored Lavelle for her four terms as mayor, and state senator Valerie Foushee administered the oath of office to her successor, Damon Seils. Randee Haven-O'Donnell, Barbara Foushee and Danny Nowell began council terms at the same meeting.
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Orange County's clerk of superior court is honored for work in guardianship law
Kleinschmidt received the Isabella Award at the National Probate Judges Conference for his contributions to guardianship and probate law. The award is named for judge Isabella Horton Grant and goes to people whose leadership improves guardianship laws, court administration and practice.
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