This is a delightful small memoir of the lives of two 100-year-old African-American sisters who suffered under Jim Crow and other repressive situations, yet managed to be college educated (one a dentist, the other a teacher) and homeowners.

These ladies are absolutely irrepressible! They say whatever they think. Such as: “You see, when you are colored, everyone is always looking for your faults. If you are going to make it, you have to be entirely honest, clean, brilliant, and so on. Because if you slip up once, the white folks say to each other ‘See, what’d I tell you,’ So you don’t have to be as good as white people, you have to be better or the best. When Negroes are average, they fail, unless they are very, very lucky. Now if you‘re average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he’d be washing dishes somewhere.” and “It’s interesting the way folks have become interested in Malcolm X again. A lot of the things he said were true, but he said them so bluntly that white folks were scared to death of him. It was easier for white folks to admire Martin Luther King, because he was less threatening to them.” and “For instance, everybody knew that Nestle’s would hire Negroes, but Hershey’s wouldn’t once I had encountered that, I used to walk through Harlem and scold any Negro eating a Hershey bar. Usually, they would stop eating it, but sometimes they thought I was crazy. Well honey, I do not allow Hershey candy in my home to this day.”

A quick read, and highly recommended. ( )

The Delany sisters speak their minds in a book that is at once a vital historical record and a moving portrait of two sisters who love laugh, and embrace life after one hundred years of living side by side. They grew up in post-Reconstruction South. Bessie breaks barriers to become a dentist; Sadie a high school teacher in New York City. This extraordinary story makes an iportant contribution to our nation's heritage. ( )

I never thought I'd see the day that the world would want to hear what two old Negro women have to say," says Bessie Delany. But Bessie and her sister, Sadie, born in 1893 and 1891, saw plenty, by eating a low-fat, high-vegetable diet and outliving the "old Rebby [rebel] boys" who once almost lynched Sadie. This remarkable memoir was a long-running bestseller, spawning a Broadway play and adding to their list of seasoned acquaintances (Marian Anderson, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Cab Calloway) such spring chickens as Hillary Clinton. Born to a former slave whose owners broke the law by teaching him to read, the sisters got a solid education. North Carolina was paradise--despite the Rebbies--until Jim Crow reared its hideous head. The girls had loved to ride in the front of the trolley because the wind in their hair made them feel free, but one day the conductor sadly ordered them to the back. The family moved to New York, where Bessie became the town's second black woman dentist and Sadie the first black woman home-ec teacher. They befriended everyone who was anyone in the Harlem Renaissance (their brother won the 1925 Congressional primary there), pursued careers instead of husbands, and lived peacefully together, despite their differences. Sadie was more peaceable, like Booker T. Washington, while Bessie was a W.E.B. Du Bois-style militant.
They're funny: Bessie notes that blacks must be sharp to get ahead, "But if you're average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he'd be washing dishes somewhere." And they are wise: Sadie says, "Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ( )

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5... ( )

Fascinating. I felt like I was touching living history when I read these words. An inside look at a world I never could have dreamed. ( )