Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years

Black Enterprise, Feb, 1994 by Carolyn Odom Steele

Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years is a must read, not just for its historical accounts but also for its charming and candid reminiscences by two very learned and genteel African-American centenarians.

Sarah Louise (Sadie) and Annie Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany are two African-American sisters born into a family of educational privilege before the turn of the century. Their recollections weave a saga of black history: from Reconstruction to New York City's Harlem Renaissance.

Having Our Say provides an insider's view of what black life was like when race and sex discrimination were not only legal, but encouraged. We learn how parental teachings served to steel the sisters against controversy and to face and successfully challenge prejudice. They credit this upbringing for their professional success: one sister was the second black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York, while the other became the first black to teach home economics at the high school level.

Delightfully insightful and easy to read, Having Our Say is replete with the kind of shared values and familial devotion that should inspire us all.