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Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years

Sarah Louise Delany and Annie Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth

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Important Quotations Explained

1. I was torn between two issues—colored, and women’s rights. But it seemed to me that no matter how much I had to put up with as a woman, the bigger problem was being colored. People looked at me and the first thing they saw was Negro, not woman.


2. Those were hard times, after slavery days. Much of the South was scarred by the Civil War and there wasn’t much food or supplies among the whites, let alone the Negroes. Most of the slaves, when they were freed, wandered about the countryside like shell-shocked soldiers.


3. Jim Crow made it an even bigger stigma to be colored, and any hope of equality between the races came to a grinding halt. Papa used to say that real equality would come as Negroes became more educated and owned their own land. Negroes had to support each other, he used to say.


4. Somebody asked us if we remembered seeing the Statue of Liberty as we pulled into the harbor. Tell you the truth, we didn’t care too much about it. The Statue of Liberty was important to white European immigrants. It was a symbol to them. We knew it wasn’t meant for us.


5. The whites resented the Negroes taking over Harlem, but eventually all of them had to serve Negroes—including at those white-owned restaurants—or go out of business, because after a while there was nobody left but Negroes. White folks had run out of Harlem like fleas from a dead dog.