"A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story"

A Ride to Remember tells how a community came together—both Black and White—to make a change. When Sharon Langley was born in the early 1960s, many amusement parks were segregated, and African American families were not allowed entry. This book reveals how in the summer of 1963, due to demonstrations and public protests, the Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Maryland became desegregated and opened to all for the first time. Co-author Sharon Langley was the first African American child to ride the carousel. This was on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Langley’s ride to remember demonstrated the possibilities of King’s dream. 

Read by Ashley De La Rosa, who is Eliza Schuyler Hamilton in the North American Tour of Hamilton.

Read Along Activity Sheet

Published in 2020 by Abrams Books for Young Readers.

Order A Ride to Remember at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute receives an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link to bookshop.org provided here

To see the full archive of Hamilton Cast Read Alongs, visit gilderlehrman.org/readalong.