Having Our Say by Amy Hill Hearth

First published: 1993

Type of work: Autobiography

Time of work: 1889-1991

Locale: Raleigh, North Carolina; New York

Principal Personages:

• Sarah Delany (Sadie), the older of two one-hundred-year-old sisters
• A. Elizabeth Delany (Bessie), Sarah’s younger sister
• Henry Beard Delany (Papa), the sisters’ revered father, who influenced them with his wisdom and example
• Nanny James Logan Delany (Mama), the sisters’ beloved mother, who nurtured them as children and shared life with them after her husband’s death

Form and Content

Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First One Hundred Years is the result of an interview with Sarah and Elizabeth Delany conducted by Amy Hill Hearth on the occasion of Elizabeth’s one-hundredth birthday. Hearth, a writer for The New York Times, published an article about the sisters that received such positive public reaction that editors at the Kodansha America publishing company proposed that they write a book. Though reluctant at first, the two unassuming centurions were persuaded that telling their story would preserve an important part of history for the next generation. They thus collaborated with Hearth to produce a work that is part autobiography and part biography.

Capturing an oral history in the alternating voices of the two sisters, the text, interspersed with cultural and social background, describes an entire era as well as two exemplary lives. The sisters describe their early lives, explaining the importance of their backgrounds and accounting for their longevity. They enjoyed a sheltered upbringing in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the college campus of Saint Augustine’s. Their father, Henry—a former slave who was the first elected African American bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States—served as an Episcopal priest and vice principal of the school. Their mother, Nanny, who was born free of a white father and an African American mother, served as matron of the school while making a home and giving birth to the ten Delany children.

Growing up in this privileged environment, the children all developed the values and pride of their parents, and they were largely protected from the acrimony of southern culture. As the children were growing up, their father—a strong, wise, protective figure—insisted that all of his children be home by dark and that a chaperone accompany his daughters whenever they left the campus. Despite this closely supervised, reclusive setting, all suffered from the Jim Crow laws passed in 1896 that prohibited African Americans from sharing public space with whites. Their educated father strongly urged his children to continue their education beyond St. Augustine’s, insisting that they work to pay for subsequent degrees themselves so that they would be beholden to no beneficiary.

Both Sarah (Sadie) and Elizabeth (Bessie) spent a few years teaching in the South after graduating from St. Augustine’s. They then moved to Harlem, joining the great cultural explosion of the Harlem Renaissance, where they sought to further their education and develop careers. Their worthy goal demanded persistence, hard work, and at times conniving in order to break into a white culture intent on thwarting the advancement of the “colored.” The latter term was then used for African American people, and the sisters preferred it as a descriptor, asserting that they were wholly American.

The sisters confronted prejudice. Bessie, called Queen Bessie by her father, was what her family considered a “feeling child,” one especially sensitive and emotional. Insults and injustice led her to her bedroom to weep or shout. Waiting in the “colored” waiting room of the train station on one occasion, she “answered back” to a drunk, obnoxious “rebby boy,” the family name for southern, white bigots. He rallied his friends, and, had the train not arrived and had he not been so inebriated, she might have been lynched.

Sadie, contrary to her sister, was known as a “mama’s girl,” and she handled discrimination by subverting restrictions with charm and by playing dumb. She was reputed to be sweeter than molasses. Despite facing prejudice, even in the North, both sisters earned graduate degrees from Columbia University in New York City. Bessie earned a doctorate in dentistry and became the second African American woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York State. Sadie earned a master’s degree in education. Using a little cleverness and deception to gain entrance to a public school system that did not hire African Americans, Sadie was offered a job teaching at a public school. Once she showed up on the first day of classes, she manipulated the school’s bureaucracy, enabling her to keep her position. Sadie thus became the first African American person to teach domestic science in a New York City public school.

Though both were professional women, the sisters survived by practicing the frugality and good sense that they grew up with. From their father, they adopted the habit of setting aside money first for the Lord and then for hard times. Both served and responded to their communities. Bessie often pulled teeth for free; Sadie made and sold cake and candy to supplement their income. For a while, her business venture thrived. After the stock market crashed, though, she closed, observing that hungry people did not have a nickel for cake. Ultimately, it was Sadie’s position with the school system that provided financial security during the Great Depression and in retirement. After their father’s death, Bessie retired to care for her mother, who moved to New York to live with them. With their mother, they traveled abroad. After their mother’s death, they moved to Mount Vernon, New York, helping integrate Westchester County. In their comfortable home at age one hundred, Bessie said with glee that she thought they had outlived the rebby boys.

Critical Context

The world was ready for the wise observations of the Delany sisters, two humble but proud women who, having lived through many troubling times, earned the privilege and the benefit of thanking God for each new day. The biography of the women was a best seller. It then became an acclaimed Broadway play written by Emily Mann and was later adapted as a television movie. After Bessie’s death in 1995, Sadie Delany and Amy Hill Hearth published On My Ownat 107: Reflections of a Life Without Bessie. The sisters, in their generally quiet way, did just what their father advocated. Each earned an advanced degree, and each made a career at a time when such action was unusual for any woman, especially an African American woman. They were friends with such Harlem Renaissance legends as Cab Calloway and W. E. B. Du Bois. They challenged the “rebby boys”; they helped their community with their careers in health and education; and they were among the first to integrate a white neighborhood. Their lives and their voices inspired and charmed many people.

Bibliography

Delany, Yvonne. “Sadie Delany Passes at 109.” New York Amsterdam News 90, no. 5 (January 28, 1999). Briefly summarizes Sadie Delany’s life and provides highlights of her autobiography.

Hansen, Joyce. Women of Hope: African Americans Who Made a Difference. New York: Scholastic Press, 2007. Profiles the Delany sisters alongside eleven other influential African American women.

Henneberger, Melinda. “Secrets of Long Life from Two Who Ought to Know.” Review of Having Our Say, by Sarah Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany. The New York Times, September 23, 1993. Focuses on the wisdom accrued over long lives that is presented in the book.

Jefferson, Margo. “Books of the Times: Two Maiden Ladies and Their Century.” Review of Having Our Say, by Sarah Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany. The New YorkTimes, September 8, 1993. Describes the joys experienced and the pains suffered by the two sisters.

Laird, Holly A. Women Coauthors. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Study of female collaborative writers. Includes a chapter that compares the Delany sisters’ representation of America to that of Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris.

Robinson, Grace. Review of Having Our Say, by Sarah Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany. Southern African FeministReview 1, no. 2 (December 31, 1995): 127. Points out the unique role of oral history in the Delany sisters’ autobiography, noting the interaction of the sisters in the development of the narrative.