Key local figure
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.
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Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
No work in the index names this person by itself yet. The works below belong to LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s, the wider story it is part of.
Quinton E. Baker reflects on how his identity as a black gay man influenced his social activism, especially his role in the 1960s civil rights protests. He begins by describing his childhood in the segregated South, not…
Because he and all of his siblings were gay men, Bill Hull felt his sexuality was not unusual. Nonetheless, discretion was vital to southern gay men, says Hull. Public acknowledgement of homosexuality could result in ec…
Cecil W. Wooten grew up in Kinston, North Carolina, in the 1940s and 1950s. Wooten begins the interview with a discussion of his early awareness of his homosexuality. Although he did not have the terminology to describe…
In this interview, longtime Chapel Hill, North Carolina, city councilman Joseph A. Herzenberg describes his experiences as a gay man in a southern town. He remembers a life relatively free of discrimination first as a y…
Herzenberg, a Chapel Hill politico whose specific role is not identified in this interview, voices his support for the Cane Creek reservoir project. The Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) was squaring off against …
Ian Thomas Palmquist was a student at Enloe High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, during the early 1990s. Palmquist begins the interview by recalling an event in 1994, around the time that he was coming to terms with …
The Rainbow Triangle Oral History Collection includes original oral history recordings, transcripts, biographical information on narrators, newsclippings, correspondence, and research materials. Oral history interviews …
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 →
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.
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 Kleinschmidt
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.
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 Kleinschmidt
Kleinschmidt served as mayor from his election in November 2009 until 2015.
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. Folt
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.
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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