Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years - The Delany Sisters: Who They Were

Famous Quotes

"We hate phones. You have no peace when you have a phone, and that's why we refuse to have one. If they paid a man 24 hours a day to answer it, we still wouldn't want a phone. " - Sadie and Bessie, age 100 and 102

"It took me 100 years to figure out that I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie." - Bessie Delany, at age 102

"If it helps one person, it's worth doing." - Sadie Delany, at age 103

"This Jim Crow mess was pure foolishness. It's not law anymore, but it's still in some people's hearts. I just laugh it off. I never let prejudice stop me from what I wanted to do in this life." - Sadie Delany, at age 104

"The Lord thinks I am beautiful! And so do I, even with all my wrinkles!" - Bessie Delany, at age 101

"Neither of us ever got married. That's why we've lived this long. We never had husbands to worry us to death!" - Bessie Delany, at age 102

Why Readers Love the Delany Sisters

Blog Post by Amy Hill Hearth
www.amyhillhearth.com
January 4, 2023

They were smart. Wise. Intuitive. Their stories from long ago were riveting and historically significant.

But what seemed to draw readers to Sadie and Bessie Delany, the late centenarian pair of sisters of Having Our Say fame, was the fact that they were utterly charming and completely genuine. In a society in which people are accustomed to artifice and manipulation, the Delany Sisters were a shock. In telling their story, they had no agenda, and readers could sense it immediately.

The day I met them in 1991, they were 100 and 102 years old, and I was a 33-year-old newspaper reporter. Talking to them was like time-travel. They reached back into the past with ease, and took me with them.

They blew me away.

I was captivated by the way they interacted with one another, sister to sister, after living together for a century. When I got home that evening, the first thing I did was call my own sister, who is a year and a half older. I couldn't wait to tell her about the pair of centenarian sisters I had met that day, and how they were still giggling and quarreling about things that had happened a century ago when they were little girls.

This was, I told my own sister, the sweetest thing I've ever witnessed.

It is this sweetness, this unvarnished charm, that flows through the book. I made sure to include it all. I didn't want the book to come across as too reverent which to me meant stale. I wanted readers to know what it felt like to be in my shoes while I observed them puttering in the kitchen, or listening from "my" chair in the parlor or at the dining room table. Happily, the sisters liked my approach. When I suggested that the book be a work of oral history rather than a third-person biography, they agreed to that as well. To me, the words they chose to tell their stories were as important as the stories themselves.

And so, Having Our Say is peppered with endearing expressions and anecdotes. The sisters, for example, referred to themselves quaintly as "maiden ladies," a term I had heard perhaps one other time in my life. When I asked the name of their cat, they explained cheerfully, "We call him Mr. Delany since we don't have a man in the house." When asked why they thought they had lived so long, they replied: "It's because we never married. We never had husbands to worry us to death!" And then they shrieked with laughter at their own joke.

I could go on....and on. But it's all in the book for you to read, anyway. You'll learn a great deal of American history from the book. You'll see flashes of anger and sorrow as they tell their stories. You'll be appalled at some of it. But most of all, when you reach the last page, you'll realize you've fallen in love with the Delany Sisters.

The Delany Sisters: Who They Were

Dr. A. Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany, left, and her older sister, Sarah L. (Sadie) Delany, right. Photo by Brian Douglas; photo copyright Amy Hill Hearth.

The Delany Sisters were a pair of centenarian sisters who made a lasting and unique contribution to the story of race in America by sharing their wit, wisdom, and life stories in Having Our Say, their 1993 oral history book co-authored with Amy Hill Hearth, the journalist who introduced them to a national audience when she wrote a 1991 profile about them for The New York Times.

A New York Times bestseller for 117 weeks and a classroom favorite, Having Our Say was one of the most widely-read and influential books of the 1990s. The book was later adapted to the Broadway stage and for film.

The Delany Sisters defied stereotypes of being Black, female, and aged in America. Their candid recollections provided insight into the prejudices with which Americans still struggle today.

Born in the late 1800s in the South, the Delany Sisters - Sarah, known as Sadie, and her little sister Elizabeth, called Bessie - were the daughters of a man born into slavery. Their mother, a woman of mixed-race ancestry, could have passed for white but chose not to. The sisters and their eight brothers and sisters were raised on the campus of Saint Augustine's School in Raleigh, NC, where their father was an Episcopal minister and vice-principal, and their mother, a teacher and administrator. In late life, their father was the first Black person elected Bishop in the Episcopal Church USA.

As young women during the WW I era, the sisters moved to New York City, joining the great migration of Black Americans in search of opportunity in the North.

The Delany Sisters' accomplishments were extraordinarily rare. At a time when few women - and even fewer Black women - received a college education, the Delany Sisters earned advanced degrees from Columbia University. Bessie Delany was awarded a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in 1923, and Sadie Delany, a Master's in Education in 1925. Both embarked on ground-breaking careers. Bessie Delany became the second Black woman to practice dentistry in the State of New York, and Sadie, the first Black person to teach Domestic Science at the high school level in New York City public schools, a job previously reserved for whites.

Living and working in Harlem, the Delany Sisters knew many luminaries including Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Paul Robeson as well as entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington. The Delany Sisters' recollections in Having Our Say provide new insight into what was called the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s.

The sisters lived together all of their lives. Although each had opportunities to marry, they declined, knowing they would be expected to give up their careers which they were not willing to do. Being independent was more important to them.

Bessie Delany died at age 104 on September 25, 1995. Sadie died at age 109 on January 25, 1999. They are buried beside their parents in Raleigh, NC.

Dr. A. Elizabeth ("Bessie") Delany, the "little sister" of the pair, as she appeared in her 1923 yearbook, Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery. She was the second Black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York State, and practiced in Harlem for many years. (From the book Having Our Say. Copyright 1993 Amy Hill Hearth)

Sarah L. ("Sadie") Delany, shown in her college graduation photo, was the older of the pair of sisters. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Education from Columbia University in 1920. She later earned a Master's in Education, also from Columbia. She was the first Black person permitted to teach Domestic Science at the high school level in the New York City Public Schools. (From the book Having Our Say, copyright 1993 Amy Hill Hearth)