Rose Float Sponsors to Be Asked to Join Protest

A group of black Pasadena leaders, asserting that the Tournament of Roses has been “speaking with the forked-tongue method,” said they would lead an effort to persuade sponsors of Rose Parade floats to pull out of the annual New Year’s Day event.

The group, speaking at a news conference at Pasadena City Hall, said the tournament’s recent initiatives to open the 98-year-old organization to minorities and women have been symbolic without remedying a long-established pattern of exclusion.

The tournament this week announced the formation of a 14-member committee to oversee efforts to ensure equal opportunity in contracting, hiring and membership recruitment. Five committee members would be minorities or women, tournament officials said, and the rest would be the tournament’s Anglo male executive committee members.

“Basically, this is the creation of the illusion of power,” said attorney Joseph Hopkins, a co-chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee to End Discrimination.

Albert Lowe, chairman of the tournament’s membership diversity committee, defended the tournament’s new committee.

“It brings together at the highest level the diversity of our community to help make the decisions relative to community interests,” Lowe said.

Hopkins said that tournament officials last week broke off discussions about ways to integrate the tournament, then announced their latest initiative.

Bill Flinn, the tournament’s assistant executive director, said the tournament had only gone ahead with its own plan after the ad hoc group refused to compromise.