The Delany Sisters

I read an amazing book this past weekend, which I found on the sale rack at Border's for $4.95 Friday night. The title is Having Our Say by Sarah and Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth. It was published in 1993 and I understand there are two subsequent books that I need to get my hands on.

The book is a memoir of these two sisters who lived to be 104 and 109 years of age. They wrote this book when they were 101 and 103. It chronicles their personal lives as two of ten siblings growing up in the past century in America and their family's remarkable achievements in the face of lingering post emancipation discrimination. Their father was born into slavery, but ended up being the nation's first elected black Episcopal bishop, for example.

All ten of the children were high achievers and through education, became members of the small but growing black middle class. Sarah (Sadie) obtained a master's degree and became a teacher. Elizabeth (Bessie) became a dentist and had her own practice. Both never forgot their roots and spent their lives helping the underprivileged.

This book is only 200 pages, but contains a priceless oral history of our country of the 100 years following the Civil War era, and one which I doubt can be found in schoolbooks. I highly recommend it. I'm grateful for this insight. In reading this book, I have truly been gifted.