Ain't No Back To A

Merry-Go-Round

Documenting a significant

moment in the history of

Black-Jewish cooperation

View Trailer Here

Note: This movie only - 

starts at 2:00pm.

Doors Open at 1:30

Glen Echo Amusement Park, in a wooded Maryland suburb eight miles from Washington D.C., had been strictly segregated for 50 years. Then, in the summer of 1960, a group of brave Howard University students were arrested when they tried to ride the merry-go-round.

A largely Jewish neighborhood with a concentration of Holocaust survivor and trade unionist residents abutted Glen Echo. It quickly mobilized to support the students -- joining informational pickets and providing food and shelter for the students and their supporters. Meanwhile, the American Nazi party, and other Anti-Semitic and racist groups had shown up to support Glen Echo's segregationist policies. 

Black students marched with white suburbanites for ten weeks. Picketing together led to new levels of understanding as union activists collaborated with student leaders, and future giants of the Civil Rights Movement were born. In fact, ten of the initial Freedom Riders (1961) were part of the Glen Echo campaign.  

Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman and four still living black & white protesters recall Glen Echo's forgotten history.

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round is a timely cinematic examination of this little-known Civil Rights story, and the shared struggles of Blacks and Jews against bigotry and hate.

The film runs 89 minutes 

Questions?  Email docfilmsnaples@gmail.com .