Merritt Fund 40th Anniversary Gala – Tickets on sale now!

Jonathan Kelley LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund, Midwinter Meeting/Annual Conference

The Leroy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund, founded in 1970 to help librarians who have been denied employment rights because of their defense of intellectual freedom or because of discrimination, is 40 years old in 2010!

To celebrate this landmark anniversary, the Merritt Fund will be hosting a dinner on Monday, June 28, 2010 in conjunction with the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. The event will be held at the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library from 6:30—9:30 p.m. and will feature a special address by ALA past president Carol Brey-Casiano. In addition, the Folger Library is offering a special “behind the scenes” tour starting at 5:30 p.m.

Tickets are $75.00 for the dinner and $50.00 for the tour, with proceeds benefiting the Merritt Fund. Tickets for these events are VERY limited, and are available via ALA’s Annual Conference registration system (note that you do not have to register for the Annual Conference to attend this special event). Visit www.ala.org/annual to purchase your tickets.  These are separately ticketed events, so if you would like to attend both, you must purchase a ticket to each!

The Merritt Fund 40th Anniversary Celebration is cosponsored by ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table and ALA President Camila Alire. For more information, visit www.merrittfund.org. Help the Merritt Fund help librarians in need by attending the 40th Anniversary Celebration or making a donation to the Merritt Fund!

The LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund was established in 1970 as a special trust in memory of Dr. LeRoy C. Merritt. It is devoted to the support, maintenance, medical care, and welfare of librarians who, in the Trustees’ opinion, are:

  • Denied employment rights or discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, color, creed, religion, age, disability, or place of national origin; or
  • Denied employment rights because of defense of intellectual freedom; that is, threatened with loss of employment or discharged because of their stand for the cause of intellectual freedom, including promotion of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the freedom of librarians to select items for their collections from all the world’s written and recorded information, and defense of privacy rights.