Plot Overview
Having Our Say is an oral history conducted
by Amy Hill Hearth with the centenarian sisters Sadie and Bessie
Delany. The book is divided into a preface and seven parts. In the
preface, Hearth describes how the Delanys first charm her when she
writes about them for the New York Times and how
she eventually convinces them to share their stories in a book.
After the preface, Hearth disappears from the narrative. She provides
context for the Delanys' stories at the beginning of each section
but otherwise acts strictly as a listener. When the sisters tell
a story together, or in an almost identical fashion, Hearth attributes
the chapters to them both. When the sisters have distinctive viewpoints
or ways of telling a story, Hearth attributes the chapter to either
Bessie or Sadie. Though the book's seven parts generally follow
a chronological pattern, the sisters occasionally discuss the present
day (the early 1990s).
They compare different eras of history; make judgments with their
century of experience; and frequently discuss racism, sexism, and
aging.
Throughout the stories, the sisters talk about their childhoods
in the segregated South, where the “rebby boys,” or racist white
men, are a constant menace. The sisters have very different personalities. Sadie
is an obedient mama's child, and Bessie is strong-willed and outspoken.
Both sisters are determined and intelligent. The sisters describe
their parents, Henry Beard Delany and Nanny James Logan, who grew
up during and after the Civil War. Following the “Surrender” came
the difficult days of the Reconstruction, when poverty and a struggle
for power ruled the South. Henry was born into slavery. When the
Surrender came, his family began a free life with nothing. The Delanys
were luckier than most black families because they were together
and they could read. Nanny's family faced discrimination because
her father was white and her mother was a quarter black. Though
Nanny appeared white, she was considered “colored,” and her own
parents couldn't marry. Nanny and Henry met at Saint Augustine's
School in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Henry eventually became vice
principal of “Saint Aug's.” The Delany parents had ten children,
including Sadie and Bessie.
Sadie and Bessie encounter racism early in life. The Jim
Crow laws throughout the South required separate facilities for
whites and blacks, and on the trolley to Pullen Park, a driver tells
the Delany family to sit in the back. The spring where they drink
water at the park is divided, with one side for whites and the other
for blacks, and the drugstore where they used to buy limeade will
no longer serve them. Despite all the obstacles, all the Delany
children plan to go to college. To pay for school, both Sadie and
Bessie take jobs as teachers. Sadie is a Jeanes Supervisor, setting
up domestic science programs in rural schools, and she takes Booker
T. Washington on tours of her school district. Bessie teaches first
in rural North Carolina, then in Georgia. In Georgia, she is nearly
lynched on her way to her new job when she stands up to a drunken
white man in a train station waiting room. Both women date, but
their father is critical of their beaux, and Nanny tells Bessie
that she will have to choose between work and a family.
Sadie moves to Harlem in 1916,
and Bessie follows nearly two years later. All the Delany children
except Lemuel eventually migrate to Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance,
a time of literary experimentation and cutting-edge jazz music,
is in full swing. Although they sometimes go to nightclubs and know
many famous personalities through their brother Hubert, a New York
City political figure, the sisters focus on their careers. Sadie
attends Pratt Institute, then Columbia University, where she receives
a master's degree. She becomes the first black woman to teach domestic
science at public high schools in New York City. Bessie studies
dentistry at Columbia University and opens a practice in Harlem.
She shares an office with her brother Hap, and the place becomes
a meeting point for thinkers such as E. Franklin Frazier. Bessie
narrowly avoids an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan on Long Island
and becomes an outspoken protestor against racial discrimination.
The family is devastated when Henry Beard Delany dies in 1928.
Nanny moves to Harlem and begins to go on trips with Sadie. The
black community is particularly hard-hit by the Depression, but
the Delanys cope.
During World War II, the Delany sisters are concerned
with their nephew, Little Hubie. Little Hubie is born “damaged”
(which is the extent of the explanation the sisters give for his
condition) and dies when he is ten years old. Manross Delany fights
in the war and faces discrimination in the U.S. armed forces. Sadie,
Bessie, and their mother move to a cottage in the Bronx and enjoy
cultivating their own garden. Nanny is too elderly to stay home
by herself, so Bessie retires at fifty-nine to take care of her.
Before she dies, Nanny meets Eleanor Roosevelt. Around this time,
the civil rights movement is underway, and the Jim Crow laws at
last begin to unravel. The deaths of their mother and a number of
their brothers grieve the sisters. They decide to move to Mount
Vernon, a mostly white suburb in New York. At their advanced age,
the Delany sisters are part of a quiet revolutionary movement to
integrate white suburbs. Sadie and Bessie discuss aging and the
fears and fearlessness that accompany that process.
