Twenty-five years in the past, Lisha Bell and Maya Mitchell determined to create their very own protected area on the College of Southern California. They wished to showcase a expertise they beloved: dance.
Bell and Mitchell have been of their sophomore 12 months once they began the USC Fly Ladies, named after the dancers from “In Dwelling Coloration” who have been “our sheroes of the ’90s,” Bell stated. They’d joined different dance groups — Mitchell was part of the USC Track Ladies and Bell danced on the Trojan Dance Pressure — however they each desired an area to completely specific themselves as Black ladies who dance.
Now, a brand new crew at USC is following of their footsteps. USC’s first Black majorette crew, the Cardinal Divas, has already made its mark on campus and continued to teach and captivate its audiences by means of dance. Because the Cardinal Divas’ viral debut in September, Bell and Mitchell couldn’t be prouder that their legacy is being carried on for the subsequent technology.
“It makes me really feel proud,” Bell stated. “As an alum, after I see them, it lets me know that Black ladies are nonetheless being seen.”
Bell first realized concerning the Cardinal Divas in 2021 when crew founder Princess Isis Lang, her Delta Sigma Theta sorority sister, talked about it of their group chat. The Cardinal Divas’ beginnings reminded Bell and a number of other alumni of the Fly Ladies’ begin.
Bell, who was born and raised in Southern California, at all times beloved to bounce. She was part of her highschool’s cheerleading crew and met Mitchell, her future school roommate, on a visit to Paris.
“We have been each tune leaders at our respective excessive colleges and captains as properly, so after all, we wished to hold that custom into school,” Mitchell stated.
After they began at USC in August 1997, Bell and Mitchell auditioned for its most well-known dance crew, the USC Track Ladies, which carried out with the varsity’s marching band.
“We have been each going to proceed our love for cheer and dance by making use of for the USC Track Ladies,” Bell stated. “However once we obtained there, actuality hit.”
Whereas each Mitchell and Bell utilized to be part of the crew, solely Mitchell was chosen. “I used to be informed by the now-infamous Track Ladies coach that I used to be too hip-y for the skirt,” Bell stated. “And from the angle that the viewers watched, there needed to be a sure look that the women wanted to have.”
On the time, the USC Track Ladies have been coached by Lori Nelson, who, in accordance with a Los Angeles Times investigation, has a historical past of brazenly discriminating in opposition to her athletes. Ten former Track Ladies described a “poisonous tradition” within the dance crew, the place Nelson “[rebuked] ladies publicly for his or her consuming habits, private look and intercourse lives,” Ryan Kartje reported in April 2021.
“I believe Black dancers understand that if they’re auditioning for a predominantly white squad, they’re most likely going to be the one one which makes it,” Mitchell stated. “Particularly at someplace like USC, if you take a look at the historical past of what their Track Ladies appear like, many don’t appear like us.”
Bell nonetheless wished to be part of the dance group at USC, so she auditioned for the Trojan Dance Pressure, which is the official dance crew of USC athletics and is understood for acting at males’s and girls’s basketball video games. However she didn’t make it the primary time she tried out.
“They already had a Black woman, so I didn’t make the squad till the Black woman graduated,” Bell stated.
Whereas USC is positioned in a predominantly Black and Brown group, the shortage of range on campus was a shock to Bell. Solely 158 college students in Bell’s and Mitchell’s freshman class have been Black.
“We have been annoyed by the concept that solely one in every of us might make one in every of these squads and that it was at all times going to be a contest each time multiple girl of coloration was auditioning,” Mitchell stated.
One of many most important causes that Bell and Mitchell wished to create the Fly Ladies was visibility. Bell wished Black college students and particularly Black ladies to be seen and celebrated extra on campus. Moreover the Divine 9 fraternities and sororities, there weren’t many different Black retailers on campus, Bell stated. So that they strategized in Somerville, a predominantly Black ground in one of many college’s dorms.
Enter the USC Fly Ladies, a dance crew the place Black ladies might specific themselves freely. Bell and Mitchell made it a degree to have ladies of assorted shapes, sizes and ethnicities as a part of their crew. Mitchell stated many individuals have a stereotypical thought of what a dancer is meant to appear like: typically white and slender. The Fly Ladies wished to alter that narrative and showcase that anybody could possibly be a dancer.
“We have been annoyed by the concept that solely one in every of us might make one in every of these squads and that it was at all times going to be a contest each time multiple girl of coloration was auditioning.”
– Maya Mitchell, a co-founder of the USC Fly Ladies
The crew had its first efficiency throughout Black Historical past Month 1998 in entrance of the well-known Tommy Trojan landmark. “We carried out to ‘Rosa Parks’ by OutKast and it felt magical,” Bell stated. “We have been surrounded by the Black Greeks, and we have been simply in our circle of affection and assist. Everybody was cheering, and it felt so good to be seen and celebrated.”
Whereas they obtained love and assist from their fellow college students, the Fly Ladies confronted backlash from some USC directors.
“We did a dance to Ice Dice’s tune ‘We Be Clubbin’’ and that was my jam so that you couldn’t inform me nothing,” Bell stated. When the performers walked off the basketball courtroom, they obtained impolite feedback from coaches and academics, telling them to not ever dance like that once more. “That’s a actuality of doing ethnic dances or being too Black in white areas,” Bell stated.
The Fly Ladies’ final official efficiency was in 2008, however the crew reunited for a efficiency in 2015. “We did a Fly Woman reunion, and everybody saved asking what occurred to the crew,” Bell stated. “On the time, there was a motion of aggressive dance groups that form of flourished after which form of disappeared.”
Competitions such because the World Hip-Hop Dance Championship, which was created in Los Angeles in 2002, helped to publicize hip-hop dance groups. Two years later, the USC Hip-Hop Showcase was created. Groups resembling Vanguards Crew, Chaotic 3, iGroove and USC Fly Ladies placed on biannual performances for college kids to showcase their expertise. Chaotic 3 continues to be lively practically 20 years later.
“Motion is one thing that’s innate to us. This isn’t one thing that may be bottled up,” Bell stated. “These are our traditions and we should share them.”
Mitchell stated she hopes the Cardinal Divas hold doing what they love, no matter what others say, and creating an area that’s not solely uplifting Black ladies on campus but additionally ensuring future Black USC college students know {that a} protected haven exists for them on campus.
“We simply wish to be seen as who we’re,” Bell stated. “For little younger ladies who’re coming into these daunting areas of minimal range, they will see them and know that they will thrive, flourish, be themselves and never must assimilate to the dominant tradition.”
