The 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.

Learn more about the fund, how it has assisted librarians in the past, and how you can support the fund, or apply for assistance, by visiting www.merrittfund.org.

Create an exciting program, host a community conversation, or create an eye-catching display celebrating the freedom to read! Staff at all types of libraries, schools, universities, and non-profit community organizations are encouraged to apply. Because of COVID-19, and our understanding that not everyone is working in person, we welcome entries for virtual projects this year.

To see projects from past recipients and to apply, please visit the FTRF Grants webpage. The application deadline is June 4, 2021, and recipients will be announced the week of June 14, 2021.To be eligible for a grant, organizations must not have been a recipient of an FTRF grant within the past five years. Grantees are encouraged to share their events on social media and with the press. A follow-up report detailing expenditures, numbers of participants, links to press coverage and a narrative of the event is due within six weeks of the Banned Books Week celebration. Applications are graded on use of budget, promotional plan, imagination, and schedule/action plan.  Click here for an application.

FTRF Founder Judith F. Krug was a fierce proponent of education and intellectual freedom.  During Krug’s lengthy career she worked non-stop to prevent censorship and protect First Amendment rights.  Librarians and intellectual freedom advocates have an opportunity to continue this work and stand up for the First Amendment by providing innovative, educational, and often fun programming to highlight Banned Books Week.

Visit the Freedom to Read Foundation online to apply and learn more about past recipients and their projects.  Deadline: June 4, 2021.  Contact Joyce Hagen-McIntosh at jmcintosh@ala.org with questions.

A true story of censorship and Civil Rights will leap from the pages of history and into its Washington, DC premiere in Washington Stage Guild’s production of Kenneth Jones’ six-actor play, Alabama Story,March 22-April 15 at the Undercroft Theatre. Casting was announced on Feb. 27.

In the play, a gentle children’s book with an apparent hidden message stirs the passions of a segregationist state senator and a no-nonsense state librarian in 1959 Montgomery, just as the Civil Rights Movement is flowering. Inspired by true events, Alabama Story puts politicians, state employees, star-crossed childhood friends — and one feisty author — in a struggle for the soul of the Deep South.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the 1958 publication of “The Rabbits’ Wedding,” author-illustrator Garth Williams’ children’s picture book about a rabbit with white fur who marries a rabbit with black fur. The persecution of Alabama State Librarian Emily Wheelock Reed, who protected the book in the year that followed, would put Alabama politicians, policies and perspectives in an international spotlight. In the play, a parallel tale of estranged childhood friends, Lily and Joshua, reunited in Montgomery in 1959, echoes the tensions swirling in the state capital. (Industry folk may request a perusal copy of the play here.)

Washington Stage Guild’s commitment to produce “eloquent plays of idea and argument, passion and wit” continues with this play about censorship, Civil Rights, political discourse and how American character is tested in times of great social change. The highly theatrical play was nominated for the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association Play Award in 2016. Rehearsals began Feb. 27.

American Theatre magazine pointed out the play’s “freshly relevant themes” when the play made its debut in 2015;  those themes are perhaps more alive today as stories of persecuted women, Alabama politicians, states’ rights, criticism of the First Amendment, #metoo, and our enduring national wound of racism crowd today’s headlines.  Learn more about Alabama Story.

GSLIS Assistant Professor Emily Knox has been named a 2015 Instructor of the Year by the Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) Consortium. Knox was nominated by students for her excellent instruction in the Fall 2015 course, Intellectual Freedom and Censorship (LIS590FRL), which was initially developed by Knox in partnership with the Freedom to Read Foundation and with support from that organization’s Judith F. Krug Memorial Fund. Read MORE

ALA President Molly Raphael, Immediate Past President Roberta Stevens, ALAPresident-elect Maureen Sullivan and ALA Past President Dr. Betty J. Turock, chair of the initiative, continue the Spectrum Presidential Initiative as a special campaign to raise $1 million for the Spectrum Scholarship Program. Through this initiative, ALA aims to meet the critical needs of supporting master’s-level scholarships, providing two $25,000 doctoral scholarships, increasing the Spectrum Endowment to ensure the program’s future and developing special programs for recruitment and career development.

Barbara Jones, FTRF executive director, said about the gift, "The Freedom to Read Foundation is pleased to support the efforts of the Spectrum Scholarship Program with our contribution. The FTRF trustees believe strongly in the need to create and maintain a diverse library profession that is steadfast in its commitment to defending the fundamental rights of us all.”

The Freedom to Read Foundation was founded in 1969 to promote and defend the right of individuals to freely express ideas and to access information in libraries and elsewhere. FTRF fulfills its mission through the disbursement of grants to individuals and groups, primarily for the purpose of aiding them in litigation, and through direct participation in litigation dealing with freedom of speech and of the press. For more information visit www.ftrf.org.

The Spectrum Scholarship Program is ALA’s national diversity and recruitment effort designed to address the specific issue of underrepresentation of critically needed ethnic librarians within the profession while serving as a model for ways to bring attention to larger diversity issues in the future. Since its founding, Spectrum has provided more than 700 scholarships to qualified applicants enrolled in an ALA-accredited graduate program in library and information studies or anAASL-recognized School Library program. To learn more about the Spectrum Scholarship Program, visit www.ala.org/spectrum.