Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round Screening

After selling out premieres in NYC, LA, Philly, Boston, St. Louis and Washington DC, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round will have its New York City encore screening on April 29th at 6pm at the Marlene Meyerson JCC.

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round centers the alliance between visionary Howard University students and Jewish suburbanites who protested segregation at Washington’s “recreation destination.” While we all learned about the historic friendship between Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reverend Martin Luther King, we never learned the names, nor the example of the thousands of “regular” people who acted locally and fueled the Movement. The film took ten painstaking years to achieve what Art New England called “eye-opening and profound,” yet its message of partnership and grassroots mobilization seems tailor-made for this moment. 

More about the film: 

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round

“Stirring .. Enraging … Inspiring” – Baltimore Magazine

 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. With never-before seen footage, and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman, four living protesters rescue this untold story, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. Featuring the voices of Jeffrey Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Bob Balaban, Lee Grant, Peter Gallagher, Dominique Thorne, Alysia Reiner,  and Tracie Thoms.