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Black participation continues in Tournament of Roses Parade

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Altadena’s Shannon Tracy Larsuel, 17, a senior at Mayfield Senior School, has been selected from the 1,000 young ladies who applied for the Rose Bowl Royal Court.

Selected from a group of 34 finalists, the Royal Court will attend nearly 100 community and media functions, acting as ambassadors of the Tournament of Roses Association and the Pasadena community at large. Their reign will culminate on Monday, Jan. 2, 2017 with the 128th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade.

Larsuel has wanted to be a Rose Princess since the Royal Court visited her Girl Scout troop.

She has been a National Honor Society member since 2014 and served this past summer as an intern at the Stanford Institutes of Medicine Research.

She also volunteers with Jack and Jill of America Inc. Pasadena Chapter, Group V and serves as teen vice president.

Jack and Jill of America Inc. is a membership organization of mothers with children ages 2-19, dedicated to nurturing future African American leaders by strengthening children through leadership development, volunteer service, philanthropic giving and civic duty. Today, Jack and Jill boasts more than 230 chapters nationwide, representing more than 40,000 family members.

Larsuel enjoys reading, traveling and exploring, and spending time with family and friends. She would like to attend Yale University and plans on studying biology with a focus in pre-med. She is the daughter Dori Larsuel and the late Roy Larsuel and  has one sister—Chelsea.

In addition to Larsuel, Olympian Allyson Felix will join former Olympians Janet Evans and Greg Louganis as the 2017 Tournament of Roses grand marshals.

The Martin Luther King Jr. High School “Kings of Halftime,” of Lithonia, Ga., has been invited as only one of 12 bands selected from the hundreds of other applicants across the nation.

This year represents the first time the approximately 193 members will participate in the festivities.

Finally, the New Buffalo Soldiers’, which was organized to be a historical educational organization in July 1992 will be part of the celebration. Members of the New Buffalo Soldiers strive to educate and enlighten people of all ages, about the contributions of Black men on the American western frontier.

These men were thought to have earned the nickname as a sign of respect from the Plains Indians. They served this country gallantly and honorably, yet virtually invisible to their White officers. From Kansas to the Indian territories and Arizona, and from the Canadian to the Mexican border, these heroes of old surveyed, mapped, built forts and roads, guarded rail, stage and telegraph lines. They protected an often unappreciative populace from marauding bands of hostiles, thieves, bandits and outlaws from both below and above the border.

The primary historical focus of the organization is to recreate the lives of the men of Company H, Tenth Regiment of United States Cavalry between 1867 and 1871. The organization is dedicated to the accurate and authentic recreation of the lives and exploits of Co. H, through the use of mounted and dismounted maneuvers, camp life demonstrations, exhibits of military accouterments and historical presentations.

The New Buffalo Soldiers is a diverse group of men who share a common interest in the life and times of the many who came before yet received little or no recognition of their heroic service to their country. The equestrian unit has been marching in the Rose Parade for 23 years and represents a wide variety of occupations: attorneys, doctors, firemen, computer technicians, ferriers, college counselors, police officers, students and surgical technicians.

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