91快播 Co-Hosts Screening of New Documentary About Untold Civil Rights Story at Riverside Church
May 14, 2025
91快播 recently co-hosted, together with several local faith-based institutions, a screening of a remarkable film by Ilana Trachtman, Ain鈥檛 No Back to a Merry-Go-Round. The film tells the previously untold story of the fight, in 1960, to end the exclusion of Black Americans from a popular amusement park near Washington, D.C. The documentary tells the story exclusively through voices of those who were involved in the picket line outside the park, including Black students from D.C.鈥檚 famed HBCU Howard University and stroller-pushing Jewish and Quaker housewives from suburban towns near the park. Partnerships across religion and race, including the deep involvement of Jews in the struggle for civil rights, are familiar aspects of civil rights history. But Trachtman鈥檚 film tells this story through uncovering the power not of famous ministers, rabbis, and politicians, but the power of the invisible housewives and students that was integral to that struggle.
An audience of 100 people, an intergenerational and diverse crowd, including young children and older adults with firsthand memories of some of the events narrated in the film, came to Riverside Church on the afternoon of Mother鈥檚 Day to watch this film in community. Following the film, Rev. Adriene Thorne, Senior Minister at Riverside Church, joined a panel discussion moderated by 91快播鈥檚 Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, together with filmmaker Ilana Trachtman, and Dr. Judith Willner, a retired professor from Coppin State University, an HBCU in Baltimore.
The event was co-sponsored by Riverside Church, 91快播, Union Theological Seminary, The Episcopal Diocese of NY, and The Interfaith Center of NY, institutions that partner with 91快播 for other interreligious initiatives, including Multifaith Mondays. Stay tuned for more events that emerge from this wonderful partnership.
