Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round: Screening and Discussion

Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round: Screening and Discussion

Date: October 15th, 2026 — 6:00pm–8:30pm

AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND is the untold story of the first organized interracial civil rights protest in U. S. history. When 5 Howard University students sat on a Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the white community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, an extraordinary history-making partnership was born.

The pickets attracted Nazis, Congressman, and a press avalanche. Picketing together over the sweltering summer led to partying together, and union organizers mentored student activists. Ten 1961 Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, were incubated on the Glen Echo picket line, and the carousel arrests were challenged in the Supreme Court case.

With never-before-seen footage and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award-winning director Ilana Trachtman (Praying with Lior, Black in Latin America, The Pursuit), four living protesters rescue this forgotten history, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND includes voiceover by noted actors Jeffrey Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Bob Balaban, Lee Grant, Peter Gallagher, Dominique Thorne, Alysia Reiner and Tracie Thom.