After being named "Miss Crown City" in 1957, Joan Williams was promised a seat on a float in the following Tournament of Roses Parade -- but she wouldn't get to claim her prize until 56 years later because of the color of her skin.
On Thursday, Williams, now 82, waved to a crowd of 700,000 people lining the parade route in Pasadena, California, as her float led the procession.
#inspiringstory: Float carrying a black woman denied chance to ride in the parade in the 1950s leads the #RoseParade pic.twitter.com/6zyNmT0epd— Frank Girardot (@FrankGirardot) January 1, 2015
When Williams, who has a light complexion, won the "Miss Crown City" competition for city employees, Pasadena paid for a portrait of her to be painted as she wore a tiara. The then 27-year-old was scheduled to make a number of appearances, including at a store ribbon cutting and she was supposed to sit on the city of Pasadena's Rose Parade float on Jan. 1, 1958. But after a reporter came to her home and met her dark-skinned family, her grand plans crumbled.
Nearly 60 years after she was crowned Miss Crown City Joan Williams riding a #RoseParade float.http://t.co/OzGDAmFNyn pic.twitter.com/FpHbb52nkD— Pasadena Star News (@PasStarNews) January 1, 2015
"Within days, it all went downhill," she told Forbes, recalling that other employees at City Hall stopped talking to her.
And the city didn't submit a float into the parade that year as it normally did, meaning there would be no craft for her to ride. The official line was that there were too many floats in the parade, according to Jet Magazine.
Joan Williams, Miss Crown City 1958, finally riding this morning on Inspiring Stories Tournament of Roses 2015 float pic.twitter.com/lBA8KFmB52— Melia Patria (@MsMelia) January 2, 2015
But Williams always believed it was because she was black that she was blocked from riding in the parade. When Jet Magazine wanted to take a picture with her and the mayor back then, the city's leader refused, the Pasadena Star-News reported. She considered the injustice a slap in the face, but moved on.
“Once they learned I was African American, I wasn’t the person they wanted representing the city,” Williams told The Washington Post. “I sure didn’t dwell on it because I had a life to live. That was their problem, not my problem.”
City officials invited her to ride in the lead float of this year's parade, which had a theme of "Inspiring Stories." The current mayor of Pasadena also wrote her an official apology.
Nearly six decades after she was snubbed, Joan Williams gets a formal apology from the mayor of #Pasadena. @KNX1070 pic.twitter.com/n4SFIdU51N— Claudia Peschiutta (@ReporterClaudia) December 31, 2014
Williams told the Star-News that she hopes to tell her story of triumph to her first great-grandchild, who has yet to be born.
"When he sits on my lap and I tell the story, it will have a happier ending."