Elephants: Mascot or Fetish

very room in my house has one or more. One sits on the file cabinet in my classroom. The
curio cabinet is full of them. A gold-tone metal plaque depicting a herd of them marching
hung on the wall in the den. I have a lamp made of one and a table. I collect elephants. This
collection of elephants started in 1974 after I pledged and was inducted into Delta Sigma Theta,
Inc. Sorority. As pledgees, my line sisters and I were told that the elephant was our groups
mascot and that we should strive to collect at least twenty-two of them to represent the twenty-
two founders of the sorority. Not only was the mandate to collect twenty-two elephants, but they
also had to be trunk-up elephants. Being newbies, we set out to do just that, but as financially-
challenged college students, my line sisters and I couldnt afford such frivolity, but we tried to
acquire at least one during our undergraduate tenure. Once we graduated and entered the
workforce, however, the hoarding began. I use the term hoard because although the suggested
requirement is to only have twenty-two, most Deltas have surpassed that number. Deltas have
elephant jewelry, elephant wall plaques, elephant pictures, and, of course, we have elephant
figurines of all sizes, all textures, and all colors. On last count, I have amassed 28 figurines, three
pair of elephant earrings, two elephant necklaces, five elephant pins and one elephant bracelet. I
dont buy all of these elephants; most of them are gifts because relatives and friends feed the
fetish because they know Deltas are obsessed with them, so the well-meaning gifters see them as
easy gift choices. I, myself, have given many away as gifts to not only seasoned sorors, but also
to the neophytes to get them started on their collections. I am not alone in this collection
endeavor. I did some talk research to learn how many elephants other sorors had collected
since going over. The largest number reported so far is 62. One soror in Maryland reported that
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she has 45. Based on these numbers, it is evident that upon entering the home of any Delta
woman, one thing is apparent: the elephants are in the rooms.
After deciding to write about the elephant collection for this assignment, the first task was to
embark on what Phillip Gerard calls deliberate research since it is for this particular project.
Driven to learn about the connection between the long tradition of the elephant mascot and the
sorority, I started an electronic search for information. After viewing two sites, I was shocked to
learn that according to the research, the elephant is not the official symbol of Delta Sigma Theta,
Inc. As it turns out, this long-held tradition of the Deltas and elephants dates back to founder
Florence Letcher Toms who had already started collecting trunk-up elephants. Toms believed
they were a symbol of good luck, so she kept them around. It turns out that her belief was not
farfetched; it was based on folklore and Eastern superstitions that elephants with their trunks up
are not only good luck, but if pointed (the elephant, not the trunk) towards your front door, it is
supposed to bring money to your home. From that notion, based on the collection of Founder
Toms, the elephant and Deltas have been linked for over 100 years..
The beauty of research is that even though the writer, in this case me, starts out conducting
deliberate research on a particular project, it doesnt take long to realize that there is more
information to be considered on that topicobject. After seeing that Founder Toms had an
affinity for elephants, I began a search to learn why elephants? What was the allure other than
the good luck aspect? What symbolic value do they have? According to Ina Woolcott, a writer
for Shamanic Journey states in the article that the elephant is a power animal as well as the
symbol of commitment, royalty, and strength.
True to Gerards quote in the article The Art of Creative Research, the answers you find beget
the questions you ask yourself. The act of writing is the final phase of research. The research
about the royalty and good luck that elephants have been credited with led me to learn about the
mascot of the University of Alabamathe red elephantsand why the school chose this
particular animal to represent their school. It turns out that the original name for the team was the
Thin Red Line, however, Everett Strupper, an Atlanta Journal reporter who was covering a
ballgame during the 1930 season, changed that. According to reports, Coach Wallace Wade had
assembled a great football team that year. During the Alabama-Mississippi game, is a typical
Wade machine, powerful, big, tough, fast, aggressive, well-schooled in fundamentals and the
best blocking team for this early in the season that I have ever seen. When those big brutes hit
you, I mean you go down and stay down, often for an additional two minutes.
Coach Wade started his second team that was plenty bigAt the end of the quarter, the earth
began to tremble; there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the
stands bellowed, Hold your horses; the elephants are coming! Right then, out stamped this
Alabama team. It was the first time I had seen it and the size of the entire eleven nearly knocked
me cold. Strupper and the other writers continued to refer to the Alabama linemen as Red
Elephantsthe color referring to the crimson jerseys.
Although this piece is not about collecting elephants, it still has some commonality to the theme
of misnamed mascots or symbols. The elephant is not the symbol of Delta Sigma Theta, and the
elephant was not the original mascot of Alabamas Crimson Tide; yet, even though I know, now,
that collecting elephants was adopted from another sorors fetish for trunk-up elephants, the
fetish is now mine. I will continue to populate my home, office, and car with these pachyderms.
They may just land Publishers Clearing House or the million-dollar lottery ticket at my door.



Reflection
I enjoy research. I love looking up information to learn more information, so this assignment was
fun to do, to some extent. When I saw that one of the options you posted could be an object, I
immediately thought about this elephant collection in my house and wondered why my sorority chose that
particular animal to represent this group of women. The readings I chose to use to embark on this learning
journey were Phillip Gerards The Art of Creative Research and Lee Martins The Least You Need to
Know: A Blog about Writing, Publishing, Teaching, and Other Stuff.
Gerards wisdom about Resurrection Man and his information about deliberate research and accidental
research was a wealth of techniques and approaches to research that I had never heard of. I also employed
two of his seven kinds of archives to research my elephants. I found out during my research that
deliberate research can cause the researcher to accidentally stumble upon more information. The fact that
one of the founders collected animals because they were associated with good luck was found out during
deliberate research, but because I accidentally stumbled upon that news, it led to research about the
connection between elephants and luck.
Martins article just offered suggestions about how to approach writing about objects. I didnt lean on his
teachings too much for this project, but I will be using to teach nonfiction writing in my classroom at
work. He has some strong suggestions to get students interested in writing.
This was an awesome learning experience for me. Although Ive done research for other writings, this one
was more focused on the research element of nonfiction writing and how important it is to give the
document more credibility.