By: Maureen Jones
The image of the midcentury cheerleader is iconic: jubilant students wearing conservative skirts in their school colors, a sweater with a logo that proudly displays the university they represent while the students amp up the crowd with routines and call-and-response cheers. It had an image as an activity for squeaky clean, preppy college girls who acted as the public face of the university, visible on major sports broadcasts from the sidelines.
Like many other sports and activities at the University of Maryland in the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was also very white.
By 1968, the campus was on its way to desegregation. Numerous lawsuits had pushed the university to accept the enrollment of black students before Brown v. Board of Education was passed, officially ending school segregation. Darryll Hill had broken the football program’s color barrier in 1963, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the predecessor of the Black Student Union (BSU) was formed in 1966. But despite the growing diversity on campus and the removal of ‘official’ participation barriers that prevented black students from joining clubs and organizations prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, UMD still had no black cheerleaders.
There was a perception of the cheer squad as openly participating in “de-facto segregation,” a view that was noted by white and black students alike. One student even reported that they had seen the squad carrying Confederate flags, though this claim could not be verified. Due to perceived hostility in the cheer squad, black students would independently attempt to start cheers in order to boost school spirit at football games. During one such attempt at the October 1968 game against Duke, the black students in the student section were pelted with ice cubes. The solution to this issue was to prohibit soft drinks and bags of ice at following games that month. After that point, the newly renamed BSU urged black spectators to all sit together in one large group for protection.
The Black Student Union in 1970, potentially the earliest image of the group
At the same time, BSU and students from all walks of life were disrupting the status quo by formally protesting the Home Economics Department for excluding four coeds from a study due to “biological differences” between black and white. Bob McLeod, first president of BSU, urged that white students support their efforts from the periphery.
“The black students on campus, this is their thing.” McLeod announced to the crowd outside the Home Economics building. “You can support us from the outside.”
This, combined with their change in name from CORE to BSU, drew accusations of separatism from some staff and students. This was despite the fact that BSU’s own advisor, professor of secondary education Arthur Adkins, was white, and attended nearly every BSU meeting. Black students could not cheer independently without being physically attacked by their classmates, so they turned back to the official cheer squad. It is in this context that BSU began to organize against the “de facto” discrimination of the cheer squad, and brought the issue to the Student Government Association’s judiciary office.
The cheerleading squad pushed back against this accusation. One major point they brought to the attention of the cabinet was that black cheerleaders would be financially burdensome and “an inconvenience” to the club. When the cheerleaders traveled to out-of-state games, they had, until that point, lodged with the fraternities and sororities of the home team. If they traveled to the south with black teammates in tow, they might not be welcome and would have to purchase lodging. Another of their claims was that black womens’ movements were “too fluid” and that adding one or two black members would ruin the “continuity” of the group. Though not included in the brief, another member of the cheer squad allegedly stated that spectators did not want “soul-type” cheers, and that it was one reason there shouldn’t be any black cheerleaders at UMD.
Additionally, two black students who had felt discriminated against in the 1967 audition process stepped forward to provide testimony. The students, not named, alleged that they were completely neglected during the tryouts and forced to practice amongst themselves rather than with the other cheerleaders. This neglect led the black prospective cheerleaders to drop from the audition process one by one. The cheer squad’s defense counselor alleged that the black students were misconstruing things that were normal as being discriminatory.
Another shocking revelation of the investigation was that the UMD cheer squad was not, well, the UMD cheer squad. They had never made a constitution or been recognized as a formal organization, despite getting annual funds from the SGA. When BSU unearthed this news, then-SGA president Jerry Fleischer stated that funds would be withheld until the cheer squad complied with formal organizational requirements.
“We never bothered to check… whether the cheerleaders were recognized.” Fleischer explained to the Diamondback reporters. “They’ve been on campus so long.”
After hearing both sides, SGA’s student court agreed that the cheer squad had not been discriminatory, but that their selection process allowed for potential discrimination and thus had to be altered. The cheer squad was still not entirely on board, some members alleging that if they did commit discriminatory acts that they were merely representing society at large, and that they couldn’t be blamed for discriminatory tryouts because they were simply following the way their predecessors ran tryouts.
The first resolution passed by SGA was to hold all-black auditions for two cheerleaders to be added to the cheer squad, selected by BSU. Diana Yingling, spokesperson for the cheer squad, insisted that cheerleaders always chose their squad members fairly and that an all-black tryout would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The BSU was satisfied with the resolution when it passed, but James Dermody, a student who appears to have been affiliated with neither BSU or the cheer squad, sided with Yingling’s claims of illegality and filed a claim of discrimination against non-black students. This claim was made despite the fact that the SGA had amended the original proposal to require that the cheer team add six new cheerleaders to the squad, and that at least two of them must be black. In response, the SGA suspended all cheer activities until Dermody’s case could be heard, and would not enforce their previous proclamation for two new members from an all-black tryout. This upset both BSU and the cheer squad, the latter of which was made to sit out during pertinent athletic events.
Since non-black students had been included in the most recent iteration of the proposal, Dermody instead validated his claim by calling it an overstep of SGA jurisdiction under the Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students, and that the previous discovery that the cheerleaders were not a formally observed University organization, SGA did not have any sway over them. This claim was made despite the fact that the cheerleaders were very eager to write a constitution and become a formally observed organization in order to secure future funding.
A verdict was reached a month later in March. SGA ruled that the cheerleaders had not been guilty of discrimination, but that their selection process had to change in order to prevent the possibility of future bias. Once based on highly subjective properties such as “appearance” and “audience appeal,” the new tryout guidelines were to be based on a calculable point system. This, they argued, would prevent unconscious racism. Before being enacted, the new tryout guidelines would be approved by a group composed of SGA and BSU members, as well as faculty and graduate student representatives from the dance and physical education departments.
There were no immediate auditions for new members, but both the BSU and the newly recognized cheer squad were happy with the outcome. The next fall, Jacqueline Robinson, Angie Sharp, and Tee Taylor made the cheer squad, breaking the 30 year color barrier.
Robinson was confident that the pressure of the legal battle helped her secure her spot on the team.Both she and Sharp were elated to be able to participate.
Since then, black students have been proud members of UMD’s cheerleading team, helping keep the energy high during our teams’ most dire moments. It took a legal battle to get there, but our cheer squad is now representative of the diversity that makes Maryland unique.
Maureen Jones is a graduate student pursuing a Master’s of Library and Information Science from the University of Maryland iSchool as well as the Museum Studies and Material Culture Certificate. She is interested in museum studies, reparative justice in archives, taxidermy, and hockey.
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