Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round: The Little-Known Story of a Segregated Amusement Park with Ilana Trachtman and Dan Freedman
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Award-winning filmmaker Ilana Trachtman, producer and director of the new documentary Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round, joins 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. This program is part of The Wide River Project which takes a deep dive—and fresh look—into the art, history and issues that both unite and divide the Black and Jewish communities.
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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4 thoughts on “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round: The Little-Known Story of a Segregated Amusement Park with Ilana Trachtman and Dan Freedman”
Good interview– thank you. I was very moved. (I was one of those arrested in Glen Echo. )
Ilana Trachtman does a terrific job of telling the story of Glen Echo and how her film came to be. She is a great story teller–no wonder she is such a talented filmmaker!
I am from Bethesda and I’m a part owner at Glen echo pharmacy currently. I live in Cherry Hill New Jersey and would love to be able to see the documentary. Will it be showing somewhere close in the near future?
The summer of 1960 I was home from college living in Bannockburn and working at GW Hospital as an orderly. It took only a day or so for me to join the Glen Echo marchers. I was thrilled. I don’ t remember whether it was before or after the Glen Echo March but there was also a march to open the movie theatre in Bethesda which I joined, arrested this time. The personnel strongly overlapped the two events. I enjoy seeing the documentary.