Named event or history
Joe Herzenberg’s election to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 1987, Mike Nelson’s as Carrboro’s mayor in 1995, and the anti-discrimination and domestic-partner measures that followed.
10 indexed records are connected with this event.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
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 event, earliest first. See the whole chronology →
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.
Part of LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s · 4 events
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.
Part of LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s · 4 events
People: Joseph A. Herzenberg
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.
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.
People: Jacquelyn Gist
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
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.
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
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.
People: Mike Nelson
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.
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.
People: Lydia Lavelle · Jacquelyn Gist · Randee Haven-O'Donnell · Sammy Slade
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.
Part of LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s · 4 events
People: Lydia Lavelle
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.
People: Lydia Lavelle · Randee Haven-O'Donnell · Sammy Slade
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.
People: Lydia Lavelle · Jacquelyn Gist · Randee Haven-O'Donnell · Sammy Slade · Barbara Foushee
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