Having Our Say: Delany Sisters' First 100 years

Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years

 Based on the acclaimed book of the same title, Having Our Say is a remarkable journey through one hundred years of our nation’s history through the eyes of two witty and wise centenarian sisters, Sadie and Bessie Delany.

 Born in the late 1800s in the South, the Delany sisters were the daughters of a man born into slavery. The sisters and their eight siblings were raised on the campus of Saint Augustine's School in Raleigh, NC, where their father was an Episcopal minister and vice-principal, and their mother, a teacher and administrator.

As young women during the WW I era, the sisters moved to New York City, joining the great migration of Black Americans in search of opportunity in the North. 

 The Delany sisters' accomplishments were extraordinarily rare. At a time when few women - and even fewer Black women - received a college education, the Delany Sisters earned advanced degrees from Columbia University. Bessie Delany was awarded a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree in 1923, and Sadie Delany, a Master's in Education in 1925. Both embarked on ground-breaking careers. Bessie Delany became the second Black woman to practice dentistry in the State of New York, and Sadie, the first Black person to teach Domestic Science at the high school level in New York City public schools, a job previously reserved for whites.  

 Living and working in Harlem, the Delany Sisters knew many luminaries including Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Paul Robeson as well as entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington. The Delany sisters' recollections in Having Our Say provide new insight into what was called the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s.

 In Having Our Say the sisters recount a fascinating series of events and anecdotes drawn from their rich family history and careers as pioneering African-American professionals. Their story is not simply African-American history or women’s history. It is our history, told through the eyes of two unforgettable women as they look not only into the past, but also ahead into the twenty-first century.

 The play, which earned three Tony Award nominations including Best Play, was described by the New York Post as  “A window on a world now lost, full of love, a little pain and a wondrous deal of hope.”  The New York Times said it was, “The most provocative and entertaining family play to reach Broadway in a long time.”