The City Manager Brouhaha : Pasadena: A heated protest by nearly 200 people spurs the Board of Directors to reconsider its selection of Ohio official.

After a heated, racially charged protest by nearly 200 people--most of them black community leaders--the Board of Directors on Tuesday agreed to reconsider its choice of Philip Hawkey, a white administrator from Ohio, to become Pasadena’s new city manager.

Bill Paparian, one of the directors who supported Hawkey over two black candidates in a 4-3 vote by the board last week, said he wanted to return to closed session to discuss accusations that Hawkey made race-biased decisions as city manager of Toledo.

No date was set for the meeting.

“I want to do the right thing,” Paparian told a packed council chamber. “I thought we had sorted through all of the facts. But if we haven’t, then we should.”

Hawkey, at a news conference Wednesday in Toledo, defended his record and said he will not withdraw from consideration for the post.

Paparian’s change of heart came after a 12-hour rally by black leaders--including a Toledo minister flown here for the occasion--that was part religious revival, part civil rights demonstration. Marchers gathered outside City Hall at noon bearing signs that read “Stop Racism in Pasadena.”

In the late afternoon, they moved to the council chambers, where more than three dozen church leaders, doctors, lawyers and educators--many of them wearing black armbands--told the board that Hawkey’s appointment represented a slap in the face to African-Americans everywhere.

They expressed support for the two other finalists, Jack Bond, county manager in Durham County, N.C., and Larry Moore, city manager of Richmond, Calif., to replace Donald McIntyre, who has served more than 17 years in the post. Shouts of “Right on!” and “Amen!” followed almost every speaker.

“I thought I would never find myself saying racism is alive and well in the city of Pasadena,” said Loretta Glickman, former city director. “I cannot tell you how hurt I was.”

As the evening wore on, the exchanges became more confrontational. At one point, the directors briefly adjourned, and someone in the crowd heckled, “Better go wash your sheets!”--an apparent reference to robes worn by Ku Klux Klan members.

“This board is saying that the best that blacks have to offer in the country is not as good as the mediocre white that you chose,” Joe Hopkins, an attorney who helped organize the protest, told the directors. “You say that’s not racism. I say that there’s no other definition.”

“You’re talking to somebody who does not take that charge lightly,” Mayor William Thomson responded. “I think you would find that if you would just back off the charges and accusations, you would get along a lot better with people. You’re obviously an angry individual.”

“The problem with me,” retorted Hopkins, “is that I’m probably not angry enough.”

Perhaps the most dramatic moment was the surprise appearance of the Rev. Floyd Rose, pastor of Family Baptist Church in Toledo, whose air fare to Pasadena was paid by several local black leaders.

Rose, the former president of the Toledo NAACP, told the directors that Hawkey has run into difficulties with minorities and that more than 20 civil rights lawsuits have been filed against the city during his four-year tenure there.

Among the most serious of the black community complaints is that Hawkey unfairly fired a black Toledo city official.

“If you have been told that Philip Hawkey has no race-relations problems in Toledo, you have been sold a bill of goods,” Rose said.

He also charged that Hawkey frequently pitted blacks against blacks, “using some of us against the rest of us, and then discrediting us all.”

Rose alluded to a videotape prepared by Hawkey that features several black leaders in Toledo expressing their support for him. A copy of the tape was given to Thomson, who showed it to the board at a closed meeting last week, according to several directors.

The tape has no statements by Toledo’s one black city councilman, instead featuring comments only by blacks who are outside the mainstream of the city’s African-American community, Rose said.

In his Wednesday press conference, Hawkey criticized Rose for his “attempt to sow seeds of meanness.”

“It is regretful that Floyd Rose took his message of hate to Pasadena,” Hawkey said. “His statements were malicious and were solely focused on destroying my reputation.”

Paparian, however, said Rose raised enough points to merit reopening the debate.

The board unanimously agreed to reconsider Hawkey’s selection.

“I thought we had answered every possible question,” Paparian said. “Now I don’t know what all the facts are.”

Times staff writer Vicki Torres also contributed to this story from Toledo.