Delany, Sarah Louise, 1889-1999

Sarah Delany, who turned 102 on Thursday; her "little" sister, Dr. Elizabeth Delany, who celebrated her 100th birthday on Sept. 3; Delany sisters, who live together in the house they bought here 34 years ago; Their birthdays have been recognized by the White House, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, Mayor Ronald A. Blackwood of Mount Vernon and even by Willard Scott, the weatherman on NBC's "Today" show; They are women of considerable accomplishment, having had successful careers -- one as a dentist and the other, a teacher -- during an era when black women had very few opportunities; The daughters of a slave, the Delany sisters remember life in their native Raleigh, N.C., before the passage of Jim Crow laws that institutionalized segregation by race at the turn of the century. As young women, they moved to New York City, living in Harlem during its heyday in the 20's and 30's; The Delany sisters were born on the campus of St. Augustine's College, a school for blacks in Raleigh where their father, Henry Beard Delany, was a teacher and administrator and their mother, Nanny James Delany, was the matron supervising day-to-day operations; As young girls, the sisters said, their lives changed abruptly with the passage, around 1900, of the Jim Crow laws. "Suddenly, everything was different," Bessie Delany said; Sadie Delany attended a two-year program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and graduated at age 31 with a bachelor's degree from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1920. In 1925 she earned a master's degree in education from Columbia; The sisters shared an apartment at 145th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem; The sisters socialized with many of the most prominent blacks of that era, including W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes; Sadie Delany taught home economics at P.S. 119 in Manhattan, Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, Girls High School in Brooklyn and, finally, at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx. "I was the first appointed Negro in home economics at the high school level in New York City," she said. That was in 1926; To get her first high school teaching position, she skipped a meeting she was supposed to have attended, received her teaching appointment through the mail and "just showed up" on the first day of school, she said. "They just about dropped dead when they saw me," she said with a laugh; Sadie Delany continued to teach until 1960. In 1957, the sisters moved to their house in Mount Vernon, where they have lived quietly ever since;

Sarah (Sadie) Delany, the last of the storied Delany sisters, died peacefully in her sleep at age 109 yesterday at her home in Mount Vernon, N.Y.; Miss Delany and her younger sister, Dr. A. Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany, were always celebrated in Harlem, where they lived and flourished from 1916 to 1957, after leaving their native Raleigh, N.C.; The sisters gained widespread fame after the publication in 1993 of a memoir they called ''Having Our Say; The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years.'' They wrote it with Amy Hill Hearth as an oral history from their early days in the Jim Crow South to their arrival in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance to their life in a white suburb; The book, now part of curriculums at hundreds of colleges and high schools; They followed it in 1995 with ''The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom.'' In 1995, ''Having Our Say'' was adapted by Emily Mann into a Broadway play; Her last book, with Ms. Hearth, ''On My Own at 107: Reflections on a Life Without Bessie,'' appeared in May 1997; The Delanys were a mix of hard-working African, white and American Indian stock, a family that was rich in everything but money, reserved, aristocratic and irrepressible even as they suffered through segregation. Sadie Delany always thought of herself as a ''colored woman'' or, if one insisted on labels, a Negro. She never saw herself as black -- that did not describe her color, she used to say -- nor did she care for the term African-American; Sadie Delany liked to say that when she got her master's degree in education from Columbia in 1925, a white teacher there observed, ''That Sarah Delany. You tell her to do something, she smiles at you, and then she just turns around and does what she wants anyway.''; She proudly recalled driving Booker T. Washington around when he visited; While she was teaching at Public School 119, Sadie Delany found she could not support herself on the salary, so she started baking cakes and selling them for a nickel a slice to other teachers. She also made lemon and cinnamon lollipops, which she sold for a penny a piece; People liked her cakes and candies so much that she rented a loft on 121st Street in the late 1920's and made homemade chocolate fondant, a soft, creamy affair. Called ''Delany's Delights,'' it was soon sold all over New York, including Abraham & Straus, at $2 a pound. She closed her business down after the 1929 stock market crash; She told Ms. Hearth: ''New York was no piece of cake for a colored person, but it was an improvement over the South, child. But don't go thinking I don't love the South. I was born there, and I expect to be buried there, right next to my Mama and Papa. Raleigh will always be home.'';

Sarah Louise "Sadie" Delany; born September 19, 1889, Lynch's Station, Campbell County, Virginia, U.S.; died January 25, 1999 (aged 109), Mount Vernon, New York, U.S.; second-eldest of ten children born to the Rev. Henry Beard Delany (1858–1928), the first Black person elected Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, and Nanny Logan Delany (1861–1956), an educator; father born a slave; raised on the campus of St. Augustine's School (now University) in Raleigh, North Carolina; 1910 graduate of St. Augustine's School; In 1916, she moved to New York City, where she attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, then transferred to Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1920 and a master's of education in 1925. She was a New York City schoolteacher until her retirement in 1960. She was the first black person permitted to teach domestic science on the high school level in New York City; 1991, Delany and her sister Bessie were interviewed by journalist Amy Hearth, who wrote a feature story about them for The New York Times "Two 'Maiden Ladies' With Century-Old Stories to Tell"; Ms. Hearth and the sisters worked closely for two years to create the book, an oral history called Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, which dealt with the trials and tribulations the sisters had faced during their century of life. spawned a Broadway play in 1995 and a television film in 1999; In 1994, the sisters and Hearth published The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom, a follow-up to Having Our Say. After Bessie's death in 1995 at age 104, Sadie Delany and Hearth created a third book, On My Own At 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessie; Her siblings were Lemuel Thackara Delany (1887–1956), Annie Elizabeth ("Bessie") Delany (1891–1995), Julia Emery Delany (1893–1974), Henry Delany, Jr. (1895–1991), Lucius Delany (1897–1969), William Manross Delany (1899–1955), Hubert Thomas Delany (1901–1990), Laura Edith Delany (1903–1993), Samuel Ray Delany (1906–1965), Delany was the aunt of science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany Jr., the son of her youngest brother. Living Relative Families: Delany, Mickey, Stent, and Graham Families;