Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round

Post-screening discussion with director/producer Ilana Trachtman at both screenings.

A timely evocation of cooperative political protest, director-producer Ilana Trachtman’s invigorating, nuanced documentary recalls a small yet crucial chapter in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1960, five students from Howard University perched defiantly on a merry-go-round in Maryland’s Glen Echo Amusement Park, which had been segregated since the turn of the 20th century, and refused to leave. As their sit-in gained national attention, the Black students were joined in their resistance by members of Bannockburn, a mostly Jewish housing community across the street. Borrowing its title from a Langston Hughes poem, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round features a voice-over cast that includes Mandy Patinkin, Jeffrey Wright, and Dominique Thorne, among others. Inspired by her own family history, the Emmy-winning Trachtman, whose father was a Jewish labor organizer, has created an uplifting work of historical excavation that reminds viewers of the importance of collaboration and humility in the face of injustice.