YDI Explores Leadership & Legacy at Howard University Screening
- Tralonne Shorter
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
On February 17, Youth Democracy Institute gathered at Howard University for a special screening of Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round, joined by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Ilana Trachtman for an insightful post-film conversation on youth leadership, coalition building, and moral courage.
We were honored to welcome a cross-section of community allies — including Dr. Elsie Scott, Director of Howard University’s Ronald W. Walters Leadership & Public Policy Center; Howard alumni; YDI camp families and young leaders; community partners; members of the YDI National Advisory Council; and coverage from The Hilltop, Howard’s student newspaper.
The film chronicles how five Howard students helped form the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) and led desegregation campaigns locally — including in Arlington, Virginia — before expanding their organizing to Glen Echo Amusement Park in Maryland.
What began as disciplined campus-based organizing grew into something larger. At Glen Echo, their work drew in members of the Jewish community — individuals shaped by their own histories of persecution who recognized injustice when they saw it. Inspired by the students’ courage, they joined in solidarity, forming a multiracial, multigenerational coalition grounded in shared moral conviction.
That coalition model would later echo in the work of Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) through SNCC, and in the moral architecture of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition — a blueprint for broad, principled alliances rooted in shared conviction and collective power.
Rev. Jackson carried that torch faithfully.
Now, the responsibility shifts to us.
The Glen Echo campaign reminds us that coalition-building is not accidental. It is cultivated. It is organized. It is sustained across generations.
This screening closed YDI’s inaugural Leadership & Legacy Series — a multi-part civic learning journey that began in November with our Cultural Leadership Academy, bringing Black and Jewish middle school students together to explore shared history, including a visit to the Holocaust Museum. In January, we hosted an MLK Leadership Workshop. We also launched our Emerging Leaders Academy social justice series in partnership with Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy.
Each convening has centered one idea: Young people are not the leaders of tomorrow — they are the leaders we must cultivate today.
Youth Democracy Institute was founded nearly one year ago to ensure that young people ages 10 to 24 are not only inspired by stories of courage, but equipped to practice it. Through leadership camps, cohort-based academies, and paid fellowships, YDI prepares emerging leaders to understand governance, build coalitions, and influence policy. We have piloted programming in middle and high schools across three states and the District of Columbia, while preparing to launch our inaugural Policy Academy cohort at Howard University this fall.
The question before us is not whether young people have power.
They do.
The question is whether we will invest in preparing them to use it — collectively, strategically, and with moral clarity.
The torch has been carried with courage. Now it must be strengthened, sustained, and intentionally passed forward.
