Goldie Frinks Wells

City councilman Goldie Frinks Wells was born in Edenton, North Carolina, to Golden Asro Frinks and Ruth H. Frinks on November 8, 1942. Wells received her B.Ed. degree from the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, her M.S. degree in education, elementary and administration from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, and her Ed.D. degree in administration, elementary education and teaching from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Wells served as a teacher for the Wake County School System and the Guilford County School System. In 1985, Wells became the Title I director for the Iredell-Statesville County School System for nine years before working as a part-time instructor at Guilford College in Greensboro. From 1994 to 1996, Wells served as the president of Saints Academy and College in Lexington, Mississippi. In 2005, Bishop G. E. Patterson appointed Wells as the director of the Charles Harrison Mason Jurisdictional Institutes, a religious education program. In the same year, Wells was elected to the Greensboro City Council for four years and became the District 2 representative. Then, after over a decade, in 2017, Wells was appointed to fill a vacancy in District 2 before winning re-election in 2017 and serving as a District 2 representative for over five years. In 2009, Wells and Crystal Sanders published a biography of Wells’ father titled Golden Asro Frinks: Telling the Unsung Song: A Biography of a Civil Rights Activist through Aardvark Global Publishing.

Wells served as a co-chair for the North Carolina Freedom Monument Park in Raleigh, the chair of the Interactive Resource Center in Greensboro, and the chair of I CARE, Inc. in Statesville, North Carolina and East Greensboro Now. She also served as district missionary for the High Point District of the Greater North Carolina Jurisdiction Church of God in Christ. Wells was also a member the Citizens for Economic and Environmental Justice (CEEJ), Building Stronger Neighborhoods, the Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro, the Greensboro Voters Alliance, the board of the Wells Memorial Church of God in Christ in Greensboro, the Welfare Reform Liaison Project, Inc., and the board of All Saints Bible College in Memphis, Tennessee. Wells also served on the board of trustees of Bennett College.

Throughout her career, Wells received numerous awards and honors including an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree from the Charles H. Mason Seminary in 2021, the “Power 100” Award from Black Business Ink in 2023, and the Whitney M. Young Award from the Boy Scouts of America’s Old North State Council in 2024.

The Honorable Goldie Frinks Wells was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on April 15, 2023.