Storyline · 1988–1992
Carrboro unofficially adopted Elmenshia, Egypt, as a sister city in 1987. In 1989 Chapel Hill made San Jorge, Nicaragua, its sister city and Carrboro joined the Sister City program, and in 1990 a Chapel Hill delegation watched San Jorge's polls. Soviet visas were refused in 1991, but in May 1992 a delegation signed a protocol of intent in Saratov, Russia, and a Saratov delegation visited that fall.
Carrboro unofficially adopted Elmenshia, Egypt, as a sister city in June 1987 at the suggestion of planning board member Andy Dobelstein, a UNC social work professor with ties to Minia University. On February 2, 1988 a visitor from Elmenshia presented the Board of Aldermen with handmade clothing, a silver tray and a scrapbook of his city, and Mayor Eleanor Kinnaird gave him town pins and mugs to take back.
In late March 1989 Chapel Hill held a public hearing on adopting San Jorge, Nicaragua, whose mayor had shown interest, as a sister city. Mayor Jonathan Howes's committee had also chosen Tartu, a university town in Estonia, as a possible Soviet sister city, and Carrboro was interested in joining. In June the Town Council voted unanimously, at the urging of a group of residents, to make San Jorge, a town near Managua, Chapel Hill's sister city. On November 28 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to join Chapel Hill in the Sister City program, which pairs American towns with cities abroad. A committee was named to handle exchanges, including the one Chapel Hill was arranging with Nicaragua, and Tartu was being considered as a partner for both towns.
In January 1990 the residents' group announced that 17 delegates would watch San Jorge's polling places in the February 25 national election and take $3,500 raised at the Cat's Cradle toward a high school there. The delegation of residents, professors and students, the town's first official delegation to its sister city, served as poll watchers and called the voting clean. Council member Joe Herzenberg said San Jorge voted about 2 to 1 for the opposition; the town was raising $7,000 to build the high school.
In late August 1991 the Soviet Foreign Ministry refused visas to Mayor Howes, Mayor Kinnaird and sister cities organizer Dirk Spruyt, who were to leave August 31 for the first official visit to Saratov. A later October trip was also dropped after the coup and Saratov's elections. In May 1992 Kinnaird led four local people to Saratov, Russia, on what the Daily Tar Heel called the first official American visit to the city. She and Chapel Hill council member Roosevelt Wilkerson, signing for Mayor Ken Broun, signed a protocol of intent with the chair of the Saratov city council, and the delegation reported to the Chapel Hill Town Council on July 6. On September 30 a six-member delegation from Saratov, headed by the city's mayor, arrived for a month-long exchange and was welcomed at the Chapel Hill and Carrboro town halls before touring the University. The exchange had grown out of UNC historian Don Raleigh's 1990 visit to Saratov.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
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.
Eleanor Kinnaird beside an election campaign poster in an undated candid photograph. Kinnaird served as mayor of Carrboro and in the North Carolina Senate. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Biography of William C. Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, by historian William A. Link, published by UNC Press in 1995 with the subtitle power, purpose, and American higher education. It covers Friday's career and the history of the university at Chapel Hill and statewide. Part of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection.
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
Julian M. Pleasants and Augustus M. Burns III on the 1950 Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina, in which Frank Porter Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, lost to Willis Smith after a campaign marked by race-baiting. Primaries, elections and race relations in the state are its subjects. Published by UNC Press in 1990, 356 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1991), The American Historical Review (1991), Journal of American History (1991), The Journal of Southern History (1992).
Ruth Blackwelder's study of political and intellectual leadership in Orange County and North Carolina from 1752 to 1861, published in Charlotte by W. Loftin in 1961. Topics include state politics and government, intellectual life before the Civil War, and county genealogy. It runs 216 pages with illustrations and a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s biography of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the law professor who founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina and led it through its early years. Topics include Coates as a law teacher and the institute's history as a center for the study of public administration in Chapel Hill. Published in 2010 by the University Library at Chapel Hill, 322 pages with 32 pages of plates.
Warren Ashby's biography of Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972), president of the University of North Carolina from 1930 to 1949 and later a United States senator. Published by Blair in 1981, x and 386 pages with sixteen leaves of plates and a bibliography.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1981), Journal of American History (1981).
Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
Michael Thomas Smith's biography of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, the University of North Carolina chemistry professor dismissed in 1856 after he declared support for the antislavery presidential candidate John C. Fremont. Published by University of Delaware Press in 2003, 216 pages with illustrations. Topics include abolitionists and dissenters in North Carolina, the antislavery movement in the state, and the university's biography before 1962.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2005).
The papers of Willie Person Mangum, 1792 to 1861, a lawyer, judge and United States senator from the part of Orange County that later became Durham County. Five volumes of correspondence published by the State Department of Archives and History beginning in 1950, arranged by date from 1807 to 1894, with illustrations, portraits and folding maps. A source for antebellum North Carolina and national politics, the Whig Party and the Mangum family.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1951), Journal of American History (1951), The Journal of Southern History (1953), Journal of American History (1953), The Journal of Southern History (1954), The Journal of Southern History (1955), The Journal of Southern History (1957), Journal of American History (1957), The American Historical Review (1957).
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Sister cities of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1988–1992.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/sister-cities-storyline-1988/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
