Esperanto League for North America

The Esperanto League for North America (ELNA) was founded in Sacramento, California in 1952 as an affiliate of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA). Operating primarily within the United States, the League serves as a point of connection and education for speakers of Esperanto, an international constructed language, and holds annual national congresses for speakers at all levels of fluency. The League adopted the alias Esperanto-USA in 2007, though officially retaining the official name Esperanto League for North America.

The records of the Esperanto League for North America (Esperanto-USA) are an important resource for documenting the growth and development of the Esperanto movement in the United States from the end of the First World War to the present. The collection also includes material from the Esperanto Association of North America (EANA), which was founded in 1905 but dissolved after ELNA was established in protest of EANA’s president’s political controversies. Varied in both scope and content, the collection includes a significant body of correspondence from ELNA officers, documentation of world and national congresses, and a range of publications promoting the League and language. Of particular note, the collection includes several hundred audiocassette tapes distributed by ELNA, including tapes for Esperanto learners, recordings of Esperanto conversations, music, recordings of Esperanto congresses, and Esperanto radio broadcasts from Switzerland, Poland, and China.