Dr. William A. Link
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Profile
I am very interested in late twentieth politics and how they have shaped our contemporary. I will offer a course in fall 2025 entitled “The Watergate Crisis,” which will examine, using the extensive primary source record that survives, of the rise of the Richard Nixon presidency, its demise during and after Watergate, and the long-term implications of this event.
I graduated from Davidson College and then received a PhD at University of Virginia. I then taught for 23 years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where I taught US history and southern history (as well as the history of North Carolina). After UNCG, I joined the faculty of the University of Florida (Go Gators!), where I taught undergraduates and graduate students for 18 years. I retired from the UF faculty in 2022.
I have written 11 books, most of them on the social and political history of the South during the 19th and 20th centuries. Two of my books, A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920 (1986) and Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (2003), concerned 19th century Virginia.
My most recent book, which will appear in early 2026, is Jesse Helms: How One Man Helped to Transform Modern American Conservatism.
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Awards
Mayflower Award, best nonfiction book in North Carolina, 1992, 1995
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Professional Experience
President, Southern Historical Association (2018-2019)
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Awards
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Selected Publications
Books
Jesse Helms: How One Man Helped to Transform Modern American Conservatism (forthcoming, UNC Press, 2026).
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).
North Carolina: Change and Tradition in a Southern State. Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2009. 2nd edition, Fall 2016.
Southern Crucible: The Making of the American South. 2 vols; manuscript is about 900 pages. Oxford University Press, November 2015.
Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Paperback edition, 2015.
Links: My Family in American History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern American Conservatism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008.
Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; paperback edition, 2005.
William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995; paperback edition, 1997. 2nd edition, 2013.
The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880‑1930. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1993; paperback edition, 1996.
A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870‑1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
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In the News
The forgotten figure who explains how Trump got almost 74 million votes
Wed., Nov. 25, 2020 - Links