Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years

"I never thought I'd see the day that the world would want to hear what two old Negro women have to say," says Bessie Delany. But Bessie, born in 1891, and her "big" sister, Sadie, born in 1889, saw plenty during their century-long lives. This remarkable oral history was a long-running bestseller, spawning a Broadway play adaptation and an award-winning television film. The daughters of a man born into slavery whose owners broke the law by teaching him to read, the sisters and their eight siblings got a solid education. Despite being part of an "elite" black family, the sisters learned early that being black meant being a second-class citizen. They recalled the day that Jim Crow laws were passed in their hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. Before Jim Crow, they had loved to ride in the front of the trolley and let the wind blow through their hair, but one day the conductor ordered them to the back. After graduating from Saint Augustine's School (now College), where their father and mother were teachers and administrators, the sisters moved to New York, where they attended graduate school at Columbia University. Bessie became the second black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York, and Sadie, the first black person allowed to teach "domestic science" (home economics) at the high school level in the New York Public Schools. They befriended everyone who was anyone in the Harlem Renaissance, pursued careers instead of husbands, and lived peacefully together, despite occasional sisterly squabbles. Sadie was more like Booker T. Washington, while Bessie was a W.E.B. Du Bois-style militant. They're funny: Bessie notes that blacks must be sharp to get ahead, "But if you're average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at [Vice-Presidential candidate] Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he'd be washing dishes somewhere." And they are wise: Sadie says, "Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet."