Key local figure
Kinnaird was mayor of Carrboro from 1987 to 1996 and then sat in the North Carolina Senate from 1997 to 2013. Her papers, covering 1987 to 2016 and documenting her campaign against the death penalty, are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC's Wilson Library.
Source: UNC Libraries: Ellie Kinnaird Papers, 1987-2016 (collection 05356), finding aid
Also found in catalogs as Ellie (Eleanor G.) Kinnaird.
2 indexed records are connected with this person.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
1 photograph in the Society's People A-O binder: Candid with election campaign poster.
Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See the whole chronology →
Elizabeth R. Holland administered the oath of office to Mayor-elect Eleanor Kinnaird at the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 1, 1987. The board had approved the abstract of votes cast at the November 3, 1987 election earlier in the meeting, and outgoing mayor James V. Porto Jr. and departing aldermen Zona Norwood and John Boone made their parting remarks.
Town clerk Sarah C. Williamson administered the oath to Mayor-elect Kinnaird and to aldermen-elect Hilliard Caldwell and Tom Gurganus after the board approved the abstract of votes from the November 7, 1989 election. Jacquelyn Gist was sworn in as an alderman at the same meeting.
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.
People: Mike Nelson · Jacquelyn Gist · Ellie Kinnaird
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.
People: Mike Nelson · Jacquelyn Gist · Ellie Kinnaird
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.
Part of LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s · 4 events
People: Mike Nelson · Ellie Kinnaird
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.
People: Mike Nelson · Ellie Kinnaird · Hilliard Caldwell
Kinnaird left the Carrboro mayor's office for the state Senate, where she sat from 1997 until 2013 representing a district that included Orange County. She had earned a law degree from North Carolina Central University while serving as mayor.
Kinnaird announced her resignation after nine terms, saying she could not get anything done in the short session as one of seventeen Democrats in a fifty-member chamber. She said she would instead work with churches and community groups to help voters obtain the photo identification the state had just begun to require. Democrats from the counties she represented were to choose her successor.
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Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this person; they may not discuss the Orange County person directly.
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