Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round: The Little-Known Story of a Segregated Amusement Park with Ilana Trachtman and Dan Freedman

Award-winning filmmaker Ilana Trachtman, producer and director of the new documentary Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round, will join Moment Senior Editor Dan Freedman to talk about the protests at a segregated amusement park early in the Civil Rights Movement and how she was able to share this forgotten story.

When five Black college students sat on a segregated Maryland carousel in 1960, their arrests made headlines. When the Jewish community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the protest, a history-making interracial demonstration was born. The cause, and the collaboration, provoked counterprotests by the American Nazi party, and brought Congressmen and national leaders to the picket line. Picketing together led to partying together, union bosses mentored student activists, and ten 1961 Freedom Riders emerged, including Stokely Carmichael. Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round reveals the price and the power of heeding the impulse to activism. 

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