In honor of Black History Month, our first lecture on February 24 will feature Ilana Trachtman, producer of an upcoming documentary about the Civil Rights story of the Glen Echo Park carousel called Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round.

"In 1960, three years before the March on Washington, a group of radicalized Howard University students climbed aboard the backs of gilded horses on Glen Echo Amusement Park’s Dentzel carousel. Since the turn of the century, Glen Echo Amusement Park had been the DC metro area’s premiere recreation destination, it’s advertising jingle the soundtrack to summer. But the park was whites only, and the Black students were arrested. This sit-in on the carousel set off nine weeks pickets and arrests, most remarkable because the Howard students were immediately joined by a neighboring white community of union organizers and progressive civil servants. Never before had a white community collaborated with a Black student group, and never before had the American Nazi Party counter-protested publicly. This unknown story and its ramifications is the subject of Emmy Award winning filmmaker Ilana Trachtman’s documentary-in-progress, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round. Join us as Ilana introduces us to a few of the remarkable, “ordinary” individuals who stood up to injustice the summer of 1960, encountering the “other” for the very first time and also discovering the impulse to activism inside themselves. Ilana will share scenes from the film in progress, discuss the relevance of this unprecedented collaboration, and invite questions."

Our Carousel 100th Anniversary lecture series is produced in collaboration with Montgomery History. Each lecture will last from 30-40 minutes, with a Q&A session at the end. The lectures will be presented on Zoom and registration will be required. The recorded lectures will also be available on YouTube.

To register visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4nc-xUypR8WYcB4ZbsR4aA