Richard J. Milbauer Chair in Southern History
University of Florida
William A. Link
University of Florida
Curriculum Vitae
Education
- Ph.D. 1981
American History
University of Virginia
- M.A. 1979
American History
University of Virginia
- B.A. 1976
History
Davidson College
Memberships
- Historical Society of North Carolina (Elected member, 1988-present)
- American Historical Association
- Southern Historical Association
- Southern Association of Women Historians
- History of Education Society
- Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Academic Appointments
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20222004
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20041999
Lucy Spinks Keker Excellence Professor
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
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20041998
Head - Department of History
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
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19981995
Associate Dean - College of Arts & Sciences
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
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20041992
Professor of History
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
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19921986
Associate Professor of History
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
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19861981
Assistant Professor of History
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
Fellowships, Grants & Honors
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2000, 1992, 1988UNCG Research Assignment
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1998American Philosophical Society, Research Grant
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1998, 1997Virginia Historical Society, Mellon Research Fellowship
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1995Mayflower Cup for NonfictionBest non-fiction work by a North Carolina author, for William Friday: Power, Purpose and American Higher Education
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1995, 1988Southern Regional Education Board, Research Travel Grant
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1993Mayflower Cup for NonfictionBest non-fiction work by a North Carolina author, for Paradox of Southern Progressivism
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1992William Rand Kenan, Jr. Fund, Research Fellowship
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1990National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend
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1989, 1982UNCG Excellence Fund, Summer Grant
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1988American Association for State and Local History, Research Travel Grant
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1987, 1986, 1984, 1983UNCG Research Council Grants
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1987, 1980Rockefeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, N.Y., Research Fellowship
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1978-1980University of Virginia, Teaching Fellow
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1977-1979University of Virginia, Davidge Fellow
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1976Davidson College, Phi Beta Kappa
Professional Offices
- Co-chair and co-organizer, Southern Historians of the Piedmont (SHOPtalk) seminar series (sponsored by the UNCG and Wake Forest History departments)
- Member, Mayflower Cup Prize Committee
1998
- Member, Program Committee, Southern Historical Association
1996-97
2008-09 (chair)
- Member, Nominating Committee, Southern Historical Association
2009-10
- Program Committee, Historical Society of North Carolina
1991-92
1995-96 (chair)
- Nominating Committee, Historical Society of North Carolina
1997-98
1998-99 (chair)
2002-03
2003-04 (chair)
- Nominating Committee, Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
1994-97
1996-97 (chair)
Editorial/Advisory Responsibilities
- Executive Committee, North Carolina Literary and Historical Association
2002-04
- Board of Governors, University of North Carolina Press
2001-04
- Trustee, Kellenberger Historical Foundation
2001-04
- Board of Trustees, Woodrow Wilson Birthplace and Museum, Staunton, Virginia
1999-2002
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Advisory Board, Encyclopedia of North Carolina Biography
1999-2002
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Editorial Board, History of Education Quarterly
1994-96
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Editorial Board, North Carolina Historical Review
1996-2001
Books
The Last Fire-Eater: Roger A. Pryor and the Search for a Southern Identity. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022.
Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870‑1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880‑1930. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1993; paperback edition, 1996.
William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995; paperback edition, 1997.
The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths: Documents in the Social History of the Progressive Era South. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
The South in the History of the Nation: A Reader. 2 vols. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, January 1999. (Co-edited with Marjorie Spruill Wheeler).
Jackson Davis and the Lost World of Jim Crow Education, essay/introduction (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Library, 2000).
Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism. New York: St. Martin’s, 2008.
North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State. Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2009.
Links: My Family in American History. University Press of Florida, 2012.
Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
With David Brown, ed., Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013.
With Brian Ward and Martyn Bone, The American South and the Atlantic World. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013.
Articles
“Making the ‘Inarticulate’ Speak: A Reassessment of Public Education in the Rural South, 1870‑1920,” Journal of Thought 18 (Fall 1983): 63‑75.
“Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago,” by David John Hogan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) essay review in History of Education Quarterly (Summer 1987): 282-86.
“Rough Times: Rural Education in Late‑Nineteenth‑Century Virginia,” Virginia Cavalcade 37 (Summer 1987): 16‑27, and ibid. (Fall 1987): 8‑25.
“Privies, Progressivism, and Public Schools: Health Reform and Education in the Rural South, 1909‑1920,” Journal of Southern History 54 (November 1988): 623‑42.
“Growing Up Southern, essay review of Melton McLaurin, Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South” (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987) and John Herbert Roper, C. Vann Woodward, Southerner (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), in History of Education Quarterly 29 (Spring 1989): 115‑21.
“The Social Context of Southern Progressivism, 1880‑1930,” in John Milton Cooper, Jr., and Charles Neu, eds., The Wilson Era (Arlington Heights, Ill: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1991).
“The Harvest Is Ripe, but the Laborers Are Few: The Hookworm Crusade in North Carolina, 1909‑1915,” North Carolina Historical Review 67 (January 1990): 1‑27.
“William Friday and the Speaker Ban Crisis, 1963-1968,” North Carolina Historical Review 72 (April 1995): 198-228.
“What Led to the Republican Resurgence?,” The Raleigh News and Observer (July 6, 1997): 23A.
“The Jordan Hatcher Case: Politics and ‘A Spirit of Insubordination’ in Antebellum Virginia,” Journal of Southern History LXIV ( November 1998 ): 615-48.
“The School That Built a Town: Public Education and the Southern Social Landscape, 1880‑1930,” in Wayne J. Urban, ed., Essays in Twentieth-Century Southern Education: Exceptionalism and Its Limits (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1999), pp. 19-42.
“Jackson Davis and the Lost World of Jim Crow Education,” on-line essay/introduction for the Jackson Davis Collection of Educational Photographs, Special Collections, University of Virginia, Summer 2000 (https://small.library.virginia.edu/collections/featured/jackson-davis-collection-of-african-american-educational-photographs/related-resources/jackson-davis-and-the-lost-world-of-jim-crow-education/).
Oral History
Greensboro Voices Collection. Civil Rights Greensboro. University of North Carolina – Greensboro.
36 interviews, 1986-1990. Civil Rights Greensboro provides access to archival resources documenting the modern civil rights era in Greensboro, North Carolina, from the 1940s to the early 1980s. During this formative period, Greensboro was an epicenter of activity, continuing a tradition that traces its roots back to the 19th century when members of the area’s large Quaker population provided stops on the Underground Railroad.
Centennial Oral History Project. University of North Carolina – Greensboro.
The UNCG Centennial Oral History Project collection contains over 160 interviews conducted in the early 1990s under the direction of Dr. William Link, Chair of the Department of History in connection with the school’s Centennial Celebration. The collection includes interviews with alumni, current and former administrators, and others directly connected to the school.
University of North Carolina: William Friday Project. Southern Oral History Program. UNC Center for the Study of the American South.
105 interviews, 1990-1992. Interviews conducted by William A. Link, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with family, friends, and associates of William C. Friday, Head of the UNC system from 1956-1986, in preparation for Link’s biography, William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education (University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Major topics include the expansion of the University of North Carolina System; the role of the federal government in the affairs of the University; intercollegiate athletics; the North Carolina speaker ban law; and racial integration of the University. Some interviews also address Friday’s early life and education; his role in North Carolina politics, development, and philanthropy; and his involvement in antipoverty, literacy, and education movements. Additional subjects of interest are the role of Friday and the University in state politics and Friday’s work on the White House Task Force on Education, the Carnegie Commission on the Future of American Education, and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Southern Politics: North Carolina Politics. Southern Oral History Program. UNC Center for the Study of the American South.
These interviews, under the direction of Dr. William Link, are part of a North Carolina politics project begun in 1994 aimed at understanding how North Carolinians have dealt with the changes that have transformed the state since the Great Depression. The overarching themes of the interviews are the realignment in North Carolina party politics and the Republican reemergence; the evolution of African American political activity in North Carolina since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the evolution of women’s political activity in North Carolina since the 1960s; and the centrality of cultural and social politics in the state’s political contests and debates in the same time period. These projects were launched with a gift from Walter Royal Davis which enabled the Southern Oral History Program and the Academic Affairs Library to establish the Davis Oral History Fund. The other projects focus on University history; women’s leadership and grassroots activism; business history; the broadcast media; and memory and community studies.
Book Reviews
More than 50 published book reviews in various historical journals, including the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and the Journal of Southern History.
Talks & Conference Presentations
Over 40 talks and presentations in a variety of settings.
Media Appearances
Righteous Warrior - C-SPAN
William Link talked about his book, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism.
Atlanta After the Civil War - C-SPAN
William Link talked about the Civil War’s effects on Atlanta. David Cecelski talked about Abraham Galloway.
Barry Goldwater - C-SPAN
The Arizona Historical Foundation conference, “Goldwater at 100: His Politics, Ideology and Legacy.”
Righteous Warrior - UNC TV
Link shares the fascinating story of Jesse Helms and the conservative mark he left on American politics.
Interview - Civil War Monitor
In this interview, Link details Atlanta’s Civil War experience and its reemergence in the postwar period as the model of the New South.
Righteous Warrior - NC People
William Link discussed his book, Righteous Warrior, about the political life of former Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC).