About Glen Echo and our tour: Before it was a national park, Glen Echo was a privately-owned amusement park, and before that, starting in 1891, a national Chautuaqua Assembly site.   

 

The Chautauqua lasted for just one season, and by the mid-1900s, the site had become Glen Echo Amusement Park -- the premier amusement park serving the Washington area until 1968, when it closed. During the WWII era, some of the biggest swing bands in the country played in the historic Spanish Ballroom. 

 

Like many private facilities in that time period, Glen Echo Amusement Park would not admit Black people or other people of color, enforcing a strict segregation policy that allowed only whites to enter and enjoy the park grounds. 

 

In the early 1960s, the park played a significant role in the Washington, DC area civil rights movement.  Our tour, led by a National Park Service ranger, will tell us about that time, the people who pushed for civil rights for themselves and others, and how the amusement park's owners responded.

 

NOTE: One of our members, Fern, is a long-time resident of this area.  She remembers discrimination against Jews and Black people at Glen Echo and at some of the privately owned movies theaters, and the day when she and her cousins were turned away at the Glen Echo pool. 

 

To learn more about Glen Echo and civil rights, click here. 

 

Following the tour, we expect to gather at the picnic tables by the carousel, for a snack and for rides on the carousel.  Attendees will pay for their own carousel rides.