Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride Into the Civil Rights Movement

During the week of July 4-7, 1963, hundreds of people gathered at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park for a non-violent protest against its segregation. Nearly 400 were arrested and the attention of the nation was soon focused on this injustice occurring in Baltimore. On August 28, 1963 segregation ended finally at Baltimore’s Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, after nearly a decade of bitter protests.

Eleven-month-old Sharon Langley was the first African American child to go on a ride there that day, taking a spin on the park’s merry-go-round, which since 1981 has been located on the National Mall in front of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Round and Round Together: Taking a Merry-Go-Round Ride Into the Civil Rights Movement is written for middle school students. [Publisher’s description]

Read this article for more information about the desegregation protests at the Gwynn Oak Amusement Park. Also see the documentary All the King’s Horses: The Story of Gwynn Oak Amusement Park by Beverly and Pete O’Neal.

Credit: By Amy Nathan. Published by Paul Dry Books, 2011.