Author made history as a baby

By Margaret Foster

When more than 250,000 Americans gathered to hear Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963, a family of three was quietly making history in Baltimore.

Baltimore native Sharon Langley was only 11 months old when her parents, Charles and Marian Langley, brought her to Gwynn Oak Amusement Park. Like many places in America, including Glen Echo Park in this metro area, Gwynn Oak had barred Black people since it opened in 1893.

After eight years of nonviolent protests and hundreds of arrests for trespassing, the park’s owners finally agreed to open its gates to Black families.

The Langleys, who lived near the park, had hoped to go to the march in Washington, where King gave his speech, but they couldn’t find a babysitter for Sharon. Instead, they waited in line to enter Gwynn Oak, where Sharon, in a pink dress, became the first African American child to ride the merry-go-round.

“Someone had to be willing to take that step and take that chance,” Langley said. “It was a part of our family’s expectation — the idea that you did not have to accept things the way they had always been.”

Now an elementary school administrator in Los Angeles, Langley has published a children’s book about that historic day. A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story, coauthored by historian Amy Nathan, was published in 2020 after almost a decade in the making.

Langley, who has worked as a teacher and literacy coach, concedes that “it’s hard for [children today] to accept or understand that [segregation] is a part of Ameri-

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