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Key local figure

Mark Kleinschmidt

Kleinschmidt served on the Chapel Hill Town Council and then as mayor of Chapel Hill, and has been Orange County clerk of superior court since 2018. In 2026 he received the Isabella Award for his work in guardianship and probate law.

Source: North Carolina Judicial Branch: Orange County Clerk Mark Kleinschmidt Honored Nationally for Leadership in Guardianship Law

Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to Mark Kleinschmidt. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Mark Kleinschmidt’s life and work.

Search works on LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s Research sources View background reading ↓

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 11 dated events in the chronology →

  1. 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.Search the index · The ArtsCenter: Mark Kleinschmidt, board member
  2. About 500 people hold a vigil and speak-out and march to Top of the Hill after a Franklin Street attack A hastily organized candlelight vigil and speak-out opened the GLBT-SA's Celebration Week. Chancellor James Moeser, Vice Chancellor Peggy Jablonski, town council member Mark Kleinschmidt and Ian Palmquist of Equality North Carolina spoke to about 500 people, petitions asked for sexual orientation and gender identity to be added to hate crime laws, and student body presidents Matt Calabria and Seth Dearmin led a march with rainbow flags to the restaurant for a minute of silence. People: James Moeser, Mark KleinschmidtSearch the index · Lambda (Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association, UNC), May 2005, p. 4
  3. Chapel Hill council received the Rogers Road Small Area Plan Task Force's final report Council members Mark Kleinschmidt and Bill Strom presented the report, and the council voted 9 to 0 to send it to advisory boards, Carrboro, Orange County, OWASA and the city schools, with a joint public hearing planned for October 2009. Rev. Robert Campbell of RENA thanked the council for giving the community a voice. People: Robert Campbell, Mark KleinschmidtTown of Chapel Hill: Council minutes, March 16, 2009
  4. 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. People: Mike NelsonSearch the index · QNotes Carolinas: Openly gay Kleinschmidt is next Chapel Hill mayor
  5. Orange County commissioners raised the landfill tipping fee to pay for Rogers Road remediation Commissioners raised the tipping fee from $52 to $57 a ton to create a remediation fund of about $50,000 to $60,000 a year for water and sewer connections, cleanup of illegal dumping and a community center in Rogers Road. The county also moved $750,000 out of its solid waste reserve for the same purpose. Chapel Hill and Carrboro objected to the timing of the fee. People: Robert Campbell, Mark KleinschmidtThe Daily Tar Heel: Chapel Hill and Carrboro oppose trash fee
  6. Mark Kleinschmidt leaves the Chapel Hill mayor's office Kleinschmidt served as mayor from his election in November 2009 until 2015.Search the index · The ArtsCenter: Mark Kleinschmidt, board member
  7. About 2,000 people hold a vigil in UNC's Pit for Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha The day after the three were killed, an estimated 2,000 people gathered at the Pit on the UNC campus. Speakers included Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke, Deah's brother Farris Barakat, Chancellors Carol L. Folt and Randy Woodson, and Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. People: Razan Abu-Salha, Carol L. Folt, Mark Kleinschmidt, Yusor Abu-Salha, Deah BarakatUNC-Chapel Hill, University Gazette: A call for unity (February 12, 2015)
  8. UNC, Self-Help, the Jackson Center and the town launch the Northside neighborhood initiative UNC-Chapel Hill committed a $3 million, 10-year, no-interest loan to Self-Help to buy Northside homes as they came on the market and hold them in a land bank for affordable resale or rental. The Jackson Center and the Town of Chapel Hill were partners. People: Mark Kleinschmidt, Carol L. FoltUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Supporting the Northside Neighborhood Initiative
  9. Bill Thorpe and Dean Smith are to be added to the Peace and Justice Plaza marker The town announced that the names of former Council member Bill Thorpe and UNC basketball coach Dean Smith would be added to the granite marker, which already honored 13 local leaders, at a Peace and Justice Celebration on Sunday, October 11, 2015. People: Dean Smith, Mark KleinschmidtSearch the index · North Carolina Newspapers: The Carolina Times, October 10, 2015, page 2
  10. 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.Search the index · North Carolina Judicial Branch: Orange County Clerk Mark Kleinschmidt Honored Nationally for Leadership in Guardianship Law
  11. 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.Search the index · North Carolina Judicial Branch: Orange County Clerk Mark Kleinschmidt Honored Nationally for Leadership in Guardianship Law

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 2 with a known location.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

All places and the county map →

People named in the same events

People named in the same dated entries as Mark Kleinschmidt, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Background on LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s

Background reading on LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss Mark Kleinschmidt. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.

Oral history interview with Quinton E. Baker, February 23, 2002: interview K-0838, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Baker, Quinton E. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Quinton E. Baker, a Black gay man who took part in the Chapel Hill civil rights protests of the 1960s, was interviewed by Chris McGinnis in February 2002. He describes growing up under segregation with little contact with white people, an early awareness of his sexuality, and the way race and sexual identity together shaped his activism as a college student. About two and a half hours; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2008, through Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

Oral history interview with Bill Hull, June 21, 2001: interview K-0844, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Hull, Bill · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Bill Hull (born 1945) talks about life as a gay man in Chapel Hill in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded June 21, 2001, by Chris McGinnis. Because his brothers were also gay, his own orientation never seemed strange, yet he describes a South where openness could cost a man his livelihood or safety. He recounts coming out as a teenager, his family in Durham, and the bars and social world of gay Chapel Hill. Published online in 2007 in Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

Oral history interview with Cecil W. Wooten, July 16, 2001: interview K-0849, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Wooten, Cecil W. · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Cecil W. Wooten (born 1945), of the UNC faculty, reflects on growing up in Kinston in eastern North Carolina during the 1940s and 50s and on gay life in Chapel Hill. Recorded July 16, 2001, by Chris McGinnis for the Southern Oral History Program, the interview opens with his early sense of his orientation and moves to the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association, the gay liberation movement, and gay men's social world in town. Published online in 2007 in Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

Oral history interview with Joseph A. Herzenberg, November 1, 2000: interview K-0196, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Herzenberg, Joseph A. · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Recorded by Chris McGinnis in November 2000, this interview with Joseph A. Herzenberg (1941-2007), a longtime member of the Chapel Hill Town Council, covers his experience as a gay man in a Southern college town. He talks about an accepting family in New Jersey, his political career, gay activism and the gay liberation movement in Chapel Hill, and the town's social life as he knew it. About seventy minutes; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2007, through Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

Oral history interview with Joe Herzenberg, November 18, 1985: Interview K-0008. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Herzenberg, Joseph A. · 2004 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Joseph A. Herzenberg (1941-2007), later a Chapel Hill Town Council member, was interviewed by Mary Dexter in November 1985 about the Cane Creek reservoir fight. OWASA, the water and sewer utility serving Chapel Hill, proposed damming Cane Creek in rural Orange County, and residents there organized against it. Herzenberg supports the reservoir and discusses the local politics and water-supply questions behind the dispute. About an hour and a half; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2004, through Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

Oral history interview with Ian Thomas Palmquist, June 27, 2001 interview K-0848, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Palmquist, Ian Thomas · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Ian Thomas Palmquist, interviewed by Chris McGinnis on June 27, 2001 for the Southern Oral History Program, on gay student organizing and political activism in North Carolina. Palmquist starts with his time as an Enloe High School student in Raleigh during the early 1990s, including a 1994 incident over posters at the school around the time he came out, then turns to student groups at Chapel Hill, B-GLAD and the Queer Network for Change, and to Equality NC PAC. One hour twenty-four minutes. Electronic edition 2008.

NC Cardinal UNC
Show 4 more

Rainbow Triangle Oral History Collection,

Duke University · 1998

Oral histories gathered from 1998 by the Rainbow Triangle Oral History Project, begun at Duke in 1996 to document lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender life in the Triangle and central North Carolina. Four linear feet of sound recordings, transcripts, narrator biographies, clippings, correspondence and research files. Narrators and subjects include Joe Herzenberg, the Chapel Hill town council member, and Doris A. Taylor.

Duke

Ellie Kinnaird papers, 1987-2016.

Kinnaird, Ellie (Eleanor G.), 1931- · 1987

Papers of Ellie Kinnaird, born 1931, a North Carolina state senator, spanning 1987 to 2016 and running to roughly 6,400 items across 20.5 linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5356. The papers focus on capital punishment in North Carolina and the campaigns against it, health insurance legislation, voting technology, and the work of women legislators in the General Assembly.

UNC

Michael R. Nelson papers, circa 1890-2012

Nelson, Michael R., 1963- · 1890

Roughly 2,000 items in 6.5 linear feet kept as the papers of Michael R. Nelson, born 1963, dated from about 1890 to 2012, collection 70140 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. Topics include politics and government in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County, campaign paraphernalia, and gay activists and politicians in North Carolina, naming Joseph A. Herzenberg, 1941 to 2007.

UNC

Joseph A. Herzenberg papers 1883-2006.

Herzenberg, Joseph A., 1941-2007 · 1883

Twenty linear feet of papers from Joseph A. Herzenberg, 1941 to 2007, about 2,500 items dated 1883 to 2006 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5367. Diaries are among the formats. The work describes a historian and political activist in Chapel Hill, campaign paraphernalia and Democratic Party politics, and gay activists and gay politicians in North Carolina.

UNC

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  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Mark Kleinschmidt Library card Search NC LIVE for this subject and Orange County. You can change the search terms. Sign in through your North Carolina library to access the materials.
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