New krewes, old questions

In the 10 years since public pressure forced Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla to integrate, new, more diverse krewes have joined its parade. But how much really has changed?

By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 1, 2002

[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys] New to the parade this year will be Yupa Eckard and the Krewe of Ybor, whose purpose is to promote Ybor City.

TAMPA -- For 86 years, it was an annual rite of passage: Tampa society dandied up in full pirate regalia and stormed into town to steal the keys from the mayor. A few years later they added a mock galleon to the invasion, and by 1976 they were swaggering down mansion-lined Bayshore Boulevard.

For a day's worth of entertainment, the masses played their bit roles. Cheering adults lined the streets. For years even schools closed on Gasparilla. Children winced at the booming of pirates' guns and scampered to collect the blanks.

A happy day all around. But not for Henry Carley.

"Even as a kid, I knew something was wrong with it," said Carley, a 59-year-old black man.

Sacking the city of Tampa was a symbol of a larger might. The men looking down from the Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla float were all the same: white, high society.

The city was theirs, costume or business suit.

It wasn't until 1991, when the parade was to be fused with the Super Bowl in Tampa, that the event collapsed in a storm of recrimination and resistance. Under a glaring public spotlight that year, the krewe canceled festivities rather than integrate.

Know your krewes

So the city stepped in and threw a party called Bamboleo, with all the ethnic color of a Cuban shindig. It rained. Bamboleo bombed.

A year later, Ye Mystic Krewe admitted its first black members. Once again, Gasparilla was a go. Out came the floats, the sun and the cheering crowds.

Saturday will mark the 11th anniversary of the parade's resurrection in what looked like a moment of racial reconciliation. Since 1992 the parade's lineup of krewes has grown to include one that is all African-American, joining older krewes that were Hispanic and all-female.

But some of those who led the revolution in the early 1990s wonder whether much has changed in the intervening decade.

What does it mean that the parade, once a symbol of Tampa's racial divide, is bigger than ever?

1990 wasn't the first time people were uneasy about the message sent by an all-white men's group pretending to take over the city. But the National Football League's decision to play Super Bowl XXV in Tampa pushed the issue onto the front page.

Ye Mystic Krewe agreed to move the parade up a month to coincide with the big game, and at first, city officials were thrilled that Tampa's Mardi Gras would be splashed on televisions across America.

A year before the event, the St. Petersburg Times laid out the parade's stratification in black and white. The paper asked the NFL if it mattered that Ye Mystic Krewe, the sponsor of the parade, was segregated. As the NFL wrestled with an answer, the local black community stepped up to say it mattered a great deal to them.

Public dialogue erupted over who was left out of Ye Mystic Krewe and by extension the city's elite circle of powerbrokers. The parade might have been integrated, but the people who ran it certainly weren't. Every day in Tampa, some charged, was Gasparilla.

Leaders in the African-American community mobilized, forming a coalition that included the NAACP, the Urban League and churches. They had a simple demand: Allow 25 black members into Ye Mystic Krewe's ranks of 750. But their complaints about Tampa society went far beyond a parade.

"We're not just here just because of (Gasparilla) or the Super Bowl," black activist Bob Gilder said at a rally at St. Paul's AME Church, the downtown Tampa house of worship where Martin Luther King Jr. had spoken. "We are here because blacks and whites are tired of discrimination in this town."

The local racial climate in 1990 was tense. Hate crimes in Hillsborough County shot up. A Valrico neighborhood was blanketed with white supremacist newspapers. Dozens of street signs on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were defaced. Swastikas were sprayed on synagogues.

The National Football League, which had watched months earlier as professional golf suffered through a similar controversy over all-white country clubs, suddenly got nervous about aligning itself with an exclusionary organization.

In August, the coalition threatened a boycott of Gasparilla, white businesses, even the Super Bowl itself, if the krewe didn't change.

Closed-door negotiations were held at the elite University Club in downtown Tampa, which until 1990 had been another bastion of white elitism. The National Organization for Women jumped in, demanding equal social access for women. Another coalition, this one multiracial, was hastily formed as a go-between among the factions.

But in the end, Ye Mystic Krewe balked. The talks collapsed in September and, with them, the parade.

For many black Tampa residents, that became the year African-Americans finally fought the Gasparilla invasion. And won.

The Super Bowl hordes left town. But the krewe couldn't seem to escape the spotlight.

Did the krewe's rented office space at the Port of Tampa violate the U.S. Constitution's promise that government would not discriminate? Should the city continue to allow the Gasparilla ship to dock in a public slip for $1 a year?

The club felt the pressure. When it stepped forward again, saying it wanted to bring back Gasparilla in 1992, it had two African-American members (though still no women).

And as the Ye Mystic float rolled down Bayshore Boulevard that year, it looked like a new era of racial understanding, with Dr. Fred Reddy, one of the first black business leaders to join the krewe, riding high.

New krewes with more diverse memberships began to emerge.

Then-Mayor Sandy Freedman, who had always prided herself on her administration's respect for minority communities, made a symbolic gesture when she refused to hand over the keys to the city to the krewe, as had been done since the parade's inception in 1904.

"I'm glad blacks are finally getting representation on the Krewe," Janet Wood, a member of NOW who helped plan Bamboleo, said 10 years ago. But Gasparilla was still far from perfect.

"We'll just keep working on it. It is a beginning, but it's a long road."

Longer than she might have guessed.

Today, Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla is still men only. The desire of some to see the krewe admit a larger number of blacks has not been realized. Among the 1,000 members are only a handful of African-Americans.

Controversy over whether the Port of Tampa should rent space to the krewe dissipated almost immediately when the Tampa Port Authority refused to break the lease. The Jose Gaspar still docks in a public slip on Bayshore Boulevard, and no one has raised the issue for the past decade.

Once again, the city's mayor, Dick Greco, yields the city's keys to Ye Mystic Krewe. He trusts them. He's a krewe member, too.

The crowds have sprung back to twice the size that turned out for Bamboleo. Some 400,000 are expected this weekend. And the city still pays to pick up every one of their beer bottles.

Super Bowl XXXV came to town last year and teamed up with Gasparilla -- no questions asked.

Said Carley, who headed the local NAACP chapter when the controversy exploded, "It hasn't changed too much."

The parade has gotten longer. There were about 75 floats pre-Bamboleo. This year, there will be 85.

"It's just gotten so much better with all the krewes," said Thomas Gonzalez, an attorney and member of Ye Mystic Krewe.

These new krewes are notable mostly for what they are not: not exclusively white and not entirely male. They're multicultural, but they're not social crusaders.

There's a krewe that promotes Ybor City. Another, Thee Royal Krewe of Lady Killigrew, admits only professional women. The Social Order of the Unsinkable Molly Brown, named after a Titanic survivor, was inspired by obstacles krewe members have surmounted, such as divorce and personal strife. But ultimately, the krewe's intention is to promote art and charity.

"A lot of us are together (in krewes) for causes rather than race or sex," said Molly Brown's president, Alicia Keim, who owns a tree farm in Odessa.

Ken Ferlita, co-founder of the new Krewe of Ybor, said he used to belong to a krewe that wouldn't let women ride on the float or even walk alongside unless they were part of the krewe's court. It didn't sit well with Ferlita, so he started his own.

But he's no rebel pirate. "I'm not one to buck tradition."

Look closely and you can still see hints of the exclusivity that was at the center of the controversy a decade ago.

Dawn Hutchinson, president of the Sirens of the Golden Sabre, looks forward to the day her membership in the krewe is as prized as a family heirloom.

"We would like to take legacies," said Hutchinson, 30. "Say, for example, if I had a daughter, and she became 18, and she wanted to join, she could join under me because I was a member."

For a few people, the controversy is a dim memory -- and the dimmer the better.

"You're talking about something that's been a nonissue for 10 years, and so I don't know why you're bringing it up now," said Darrell Stefany, president of EventMakers, paid by Ye Mystic Krewe to organize Gasparilla and find corporate sponsorship since the 1980s.

Even after the brouhaha, it was only a few years before major sponsors like Coca-Cola and Busch Gardens signed on.

While the krewes' color lines have been blurred, they have been not erased.

"I don't think we've reached the point where it's indicative of the diversity of all of our community here," said gay activist Bill Kanouff. "There's a fairly large Asian community, and there's virtually none in the parade. People of color in the parade are still not proportionate to the number in our community. And the same with the Latino community."

But the struggle to convert the old guard petered out long ago. Even those who helped put a fresh face on the parade don't always see their efforts as groundbreaking.

"Our focus was not on breaking a color barrier," said Frank Bell Jr., of the all-black club the Buffalo Soldiers. The chapter was formed in Tampa in 1984 and entered the parade three years ago. Honoring black heritage and contributions are what they march for, Bell said, not social justice.

"It's telling the children that African-Americans were involved in the growth of America."

A decade ago, the city was smaller and more self-conscious about its national image, said former Mayor Freedman. "After the controversy and everything, Gasparilla really lost its edge."

In the end, Gasparilla became just another American parade. To the raucous spectators, vying for beads, what meant so much a decade ago hardly seems a watershed event. Instead, it's mostly just a chance to drink too much beer and have some raunchy fun.

Henry Carley is still staging a personal boycott. He hasn't been to Gasparilla in 50 years. Many in his community continue to find the krewe offensive because of its history. But what irks Carley most are the violent images of marauding men and women.

"A lot of black people in my age group won't go near that parade because of what that krewe has represented," Carley said.

But he knows that a lot of younger blacks don't share his disdain. They'll be lining the parade route reaching for beads Saturday, just like kids did when he was young.

- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report.

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