Activities of the Friends

Meetings

Bancroft Awards Dinner

On Thursday, April i8, approximately 300 members of our
association and guests assembled in the Rotunda of Low Memorial
Library for a dinner at which the Bancroft Prizes for 1968 were
announced. Dr. Morris H. Saffron, Chairman of the Friends,
presided.

The winners of this year's awards, for works published in 1967,
are The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Dr.
Bernard Bailyn; A History of Negro Education! in the South from
161 f to the Present, by Dr. Henry Allen Bullock; and From. Puri¬
tan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut,
i6^o-i-j6y, by Dr. Richard L. Bushman. President Grayson Kirk
presented to each of the winners a 14,000 award from funds pro¬
vided by the Bancroft Foundation.

It is customary each year for the publisher of each of the prize-
winning books to receive a certificate, which is presented by the
Chairman of the Friends. This year all three of the books were
published by the Harvard University Press. .Mr. .Mark Carroll, the
Director of the Press, was present to receive the citations for the
books.

The evening seemed to be enjoyed fully by all of the partic¬
ipants, and the audience applauded with warm appreciation after
each of the award-winning authors' short but effective responses.
Mrs. Francis Henry Lenygon and Mrs. Arthur C. Holden com¬
prised the Bancroft Dinner Committee.

In his closing remarks. Dr. Saffron spoke about the great bene¬
fits which come to a private institution through such a far-sighted
bequest as that of Frederic Bancroft, a gift which has made the
Columbia Libraries pre-eminent in American history and related
fields. He also announced the following recent acquisitions for the

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