face controversy and successfully challenge prejudice (Steele, 217). Thus, Bessie and Sadie became the oldest living members of one of America's preeminent black families. Gail Lumet Buckley, daughter of the actress and singer Lena Horne, ranks the Delany family among the black intelligentsia in her family memoir, The Hornes (Delany, Delany & Hearth, 4). Bessie, a dentist, graduated from Columbia University's school of dentistry and Sadie earned a degree from Columbia Teachers College and became a successful high school teacher and businesswoman.
Sadie and Bessie were the daughters of Henry Beard Delany, who was born into slavery and eventually became the first elected African-American bishop of the Episcopal Church in America in 1918, and Nanny Logan Delany, an "issue-free Negro." (Delany, Delany & Hearth, 9). The family consisted of ten brothers and sisters who were all college-educated professionals at a time when few Americans, black or white, ever went beyond high school (Hearth, 144). In particular, the Delanys grew up during the era of Jim Crow, when segregation was enforced by legal sanctions in the United States (Hearth, 144). Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were forced to use discriminatory, inferior facilities in every part of society, including schools, public transportation and hospitals (Hearth, 144). In North Carolina, where Sadie and Bessie spent their early years, Jim Crow laws dated back to the 1890s (Hearth, 144).
Having Our Say is the story of how the Delany family overcame the discrimination rampant throughout the South during their childhood to become successful business pioneers in the North. As Hearth points out in the narrative, education became the rallying
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