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This series is divided into four subseries: (1) articles (organized by decade); (2) published manuscripts; (3) unpublished manuscripts; and (4) correspondence.

Despite his multifold interests, Link was first and foremost a teacher of social history. His long teaching career, which spanned nearly five decades, is illuminated by two subseries dealing with institutional correspondence and lecture notes.

In this series are publications (mostly journal articles) of interest to Link that were produced by other authors. In a certain sense, they can be categorized as specific and non-specific (although they are not divided into actual subseries).

Fully one-seventh of the Link Papers are composed of a highly eclectic professional correspondence with many significant academicians and social activists from the political left. Sensitive to the abuses of capitalism, tempered by the Great Depression and New Deal politics of Franklin Roosevelt, Link and his associates were firmly committed to social and economic justice for all, absolute free speech, and religious tolerance in a pluralistic society. Link's professional correspondents include: Herbert Aptheker (long time director of the American Institute of Marxist Studies); Lee Ball (director of the Methodist Federation of Social Action, 1960-73); Cyril Bibby (noted British scholar on the Huxley family and Principal of Kingston upon Hull College of Education, 1959-76); Merle Curti (professor and professor emeritus of American history at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1947-1996) (approximately 200 letters); Buell Gallagher (professor of Christian ethics, champion of academic freedom and civil rights, and president of the City College of New York, 1952-69); Arnold Johnson (national legislative director of the Communist Party, U.S.A. for nearly forty years); and Corliss Lamont (noted political, philosophical, and economic critic of capitalism).

This is one of the most voluminous and significant series in the Link Papers. Harry F. Ward (1873-1966) was an ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church; professor of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary from 1918-41 (and emeritus after 1941 until his death in 1966); a founder of the Methodist Federation of Social Service in 1907; and chair of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1920-40. Deeply influenced by the Social Gospel of Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch, Ward, in turn, impressed the credo of social justice upon hundreds of his student ministers at Union Theological Seminary. Link was one of these students. After serving as Ward's graduate student assistant in the early 1930s, Link followed his theological mentor in the direction of extreme social activism. The large series of Ward materials acquired by Link throughout most of his adult life is testimony to the substantial impact that Ward had upon a more youthful Link.