Having our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years

Creating a life that is full of meaning is a challenge for each individual to achieve. Meaning is often represented by an individuals’ successful personal achievement. This success is often viewed through the glasses of academics, material belongings, social status or acquiring a well-rounded healthy psyche. There are many reasons many people never achieve this kind of marvelous life; poverty, personal disability and poor resources begin a long list of “could have been except…” reasons for little achievement in life.

Sarah and Elizabeth Delany were two black women that easily could have fit into the “could have been except…” category, but instead lived their days with sapless courage and determination. In their biography “Having Our Say”, Sadie and Bess speak honestly about the challenges of growing up and living life as black women during socially stressful and dangerous times. Both Sadie and Bess lived long lives filled with the experiences many of us can’t imagine, living to be over 100 years each. These women were born into post Civil War southern society in the late 1880’s to a former slave, black, and college-educated father; and a mulatto, college-educated mother.

The largest question posed by the Delany sisters was, “Is it more difficult to be black, or to be a woman in life?” Both women were raised to achieve all that they could in life and were expected to show great determination to gain a proper education. Persisting to achieve more in life sometime put Sadie and Bess in dangerous situations. Once Sadie was almost lynched because she talked back to a drunk, white man that entered the segregated train car and spoke coarsely to her. It seemed that before anything else, people attacked Sadie or Bess first because they were black and second because they were women in a world that wasn’t ready for them. Prejudice was found in unexpected places for Bessie as she recalls her graduation from Columbia University, “ I suppose I should be grateful to Columbia, that at that time they let me in but they beat me down for being there! I don’t know how I got through that place, except when I was young nothing could hold me back. No, sir! I thought I could change the world. It took me a hundred years to figure out I can’t change the world. I can only change Bessie. And, honey, that ain’t easy, either (p.114).”

Their story passes from their childhood, into early education, then their move to Harlem during the cultural awakening and then on to their days at Columbia University. Most individuals stop the process of learning in life. After they get their degree or dream job people often feel that they have done enough. Bess and Sadie continue to be student’s of life even after achieving their standard breaking careers, as the first black woman dentist and the first black woman high-school teacher in New York City. Education was the motivation that developed their minds and spirits, helping them to learn from life in any circumstance. Bess said, “ You see I still have the urge to change the world. The truth is, you’re born a certain way and there’s some things you can change, and some you can’t”(p.200). Education was something they could use to change themselves…and maybe the world.

Sadie and Bess lived through segregation, Negros and women gaining the vote, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, integration, Vietnam, The Cold War, JFK and Martin Luther King’s assassination and many other pivotal historical events. But the most amazing thing to each of them is that they have lived beyond the limited reach of those people and ideas that tried to hold them back. Sadie exclaims, “ We’ve out lived those old rebby boys! That’s one way to beat them! That’s justice…Truth is, I never thought I’d see the day when people would be interested in hearing what two old Negro women have to say. Life still surprises me. So maybe the last laugh’s on me (p. 209).”

Sadie and Bess Delany tell their story of changing themselves in such a powerful way that I can’t help thinking they changed the way someone thought, reacted to or treated someone that was different than themselves. Prejudice is the like trying to see with a wool blanket over your head, it’s irritating and blinding. The Delany sisters pull the blanket of prejudice off of one hundred years by living with courage and determination. Sadie and Bess did more that change their lives; they changed mine by sharing their amazing story.