I have a friend who bleeds red. Not in the color of blood but the apple red color of her sorority Delta Sigma Theta. I have another friend who bleeds pink and green – as in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
They are women who faithfully wear the sorority colors to show their loyalty and sisterhood. My AKA friend once wore socks with the sorority’s logo during a Susan G. Komen race against breast cancer. The Delta soror seems to always have on a touch of red clothing every time I see her. You’ve seen others like them – with license plate frames or tote bags or baseball caps emblazoned with the sororities’ crests.
I thought about them both over the past month or so as I came across auction items matching the colors. One is a lovely bold red leather – or a good faux leather – carrying bag with braided sides that my friend could use to haul all of her Delta paraphernalia. It’s fabric-lined, pretty roomy inside and very deep. It’s 15 ½” x 10″ and 10″ deep.
The other is a beautiful Stangl serving bowl – great for a salad – with colors any AKA soror would love. It has a wide band of green around the inside. In the center are bursts of pinks, blacks and maroons against a white background. Stangl is a pottery-make that dates back to 1814, and by the 1940s was making hand-painted dinnerware that was very popular and functional. Many of its pieces are collectibles (especially its birds). The company closed in the 1970s.
It’s a beautiful large bowl, measuring 12″ in diameter. Serving from it, my AKA friend would be the envy of her sorors.
Neither of these are official sorority items (the web has a number of sites where you can buy stuff or at the various conventions. The official ones are licensed by the individual groups). There’s no Delta or AKA symbols on them; the colors are the keepers.
At auction, I don’t stumble onto many official items from African American sororities or fraternities – even though they have been around for more than 100 years. I guess our families don’t give the stuff away when the elders die, but pass it on to other sorors or brothers (as the men are called) in the family.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity is the oldest of these Greek-letter organizations, founded in 1906 at Cornell University. Next came the AKAs in 1908 at Howard University, Kappa Alpha Psi (Jan. 5) 1911 at Indiana University, Omega Psi Phi in (Nov. 17) 1911 at Howard, Deltas in 1913 at Howard, Phi Beta Sigma in 1914 at Howard, Zeta Phi Beta in 1920 at Howard, Sigma Gamma Rho in 1922 at Butler University and Iota Phi Theta in 1963 at Morgan State University.
Earlier this year, I did find a book on the history of AKA among a box lot of old books. It was a 1958 first-edition titled “Alpha Kappa Alpha 1908-1958,” written by educator Marjorie H. Parker and commissioned by the sorority. Parker eventually wrote four more editions of the book, the latest in 1999. The lot also included a 1968 pamphlet that appeared to be part of a series on African American women, this one on judges.
Some Delta sorors collect elephants, which appear to be an unofficial symbol of the sorority. Several websites said they do so to honor founding member Florence Letcher Toms who collected them.
Interestingly, I do have an elephant I got at auction recently. It’s one of those Made in Hong Kong types. The color, though, is not red but green.
