This collection consists of activist publications from the 1960s and 1970s, including from the Stevens Institute of Hoboken, New Jersey, and from the Students for a Democratic Society, maintained by Fred Whitehead from when he was a student at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas and Columbia University in New York.

Bays taught in the Department of History at the University of Kansas from 1970-2001. This collection contains a project he worked on from 1985-1994 titled The History of Christianity in China.

The collection contains personal and family photos, family history and artifacts, Robert Burton's teaching materials and correspondence as Chair of two university departments, press clippings, and two historical outlines that represent Burton's research on China and the history of its Communist Party.