Having Our Say Summary

Having Our Say “The truth is you’re born a certain way and there’s some things you can change and some things you can’t” One of the many smart truthful things that Elizabeth Delany (Bessie) said. As Bessie and Sarah Delany (Sadie) grow up, the book Having our Say by Amy Hill Hearth and the two sisters follows every bit of the sisters lives through their own eyes just as they remembered it. As the two “colored” women are born and raised in the south they are raised on the campus of Saint Augustine’s school so they are well educated.

Bessie and Sadie both had two very different ways of reacting to the racist treatment. Bessie would always make a stand and speak her mind, Sadie would sit back and ignore it or act like she didn’t know what to do in both was the two sisters won the fight. Bessie and Sadie both are very different from each other even though they lived together from the day they were born until the day they died.

The two varied in many things from the way they handled racist treatment to how they lived their lives to even the color of their skin.

Sadie And Bessie Delany

Bessie being darker got more and harsher racism than Sadie being lighter so Bessie always had more to deal with and tougher racism. Though the two sisters are different in many ways they are also similar in many. Some being they came from the same family, they both were sisters.

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They never married, the both had nice respectable jobs, they went to college, and they are extremely well educated. Bessie always made her point known, she was never quiet about standing up for herself and people of her kind and she always stood up against racism and to white people.

Once when she was walking back from a hotel a drunk white man came up to her and grabbed her arm and she yelled at him and told him to back off or she would get the police. Sadie may have ignored the man or removed his arm and kept walking. Though it is a serious case where she may have reacted in a similar way. Another time when Bessie was in a colored waiting room another drunken man came in and started mumbling random things when Bessie told him to shut up and go back to the white waiting room. Sadie later said she would have ignored the man.

Finally the last example of how Bessie reacted was when she was working as a dentist and one of her classmates called her up and said he was going to send over a patient, at first she thought he was doing her a favor then he mentioned that it was his maid, his colored maid. Bessie worked on her out of sheer kindness but she never spoke to that man again, after yelling at him of course. Sadie would have forgiven the man for not being seen working on his “colored” maid and she certainly wouldn’t have yelled at him. Sadie has very different reactions but she also had different forms of racism to deal with.

Once Sadie had a friend that invited her swimming and when her friend showed up with some white friends she just walked right by her and acted like she didn’t exist, but Sadie looked past that and forgave that friend. Bessie later said that she would never have forgiven the friend. Another time when Sadie was getting her teaching job she didn’t want to go to the meeting because she knew she wouldn’t get the job because she was “colored” so she just sent a letter back saying that she never got the letter and she showed up on the first day of school knowing it was too late to send her someplace else.

Bessie would have gone to the meeting and asked why she didn’t get the job and prodded until she got the job or until she got thrown out. And finally during the Jim Crow days when Sadie was in a shoe store the “colored” folks had to go to the back to try on shoes and when the owner would tell her to go to the back she would say “where? Back where? ” until the owner finally let her sit anywhere she wanted. Bessie would have fought back and just wouldn’t move from where she wanted to be. So Sadie and Bessie Delany both fought back against racism and won.

Sadie won by faking stupid and ignoring it and Bessie won by standing up and acting out. The two women were very smart despite the character they played. So as growing up “colored” life was very difficult for these two women to grow up and lead a problem free life despite how hard they tried. Though they were very high status colored people and they had a lot of white people they were still judged as blacks so even though they moved to the north to get rid of some racism they could never actually get away from it.