NEW YORK (AP) -- Sarah "Sadie" Delany, who became a best-selling author at 104 with her and her sister's reminiscences of a century of achievement as black women, has died. She was 109.
Delany died in her sleep Monday at the suburban New York City home she had shared with her sister, said her nephew, Harry Delany. Bessie Delany died in 1995 at the age of 104.The two spry and witty women were celebrated as independent and educated, with the gumption and humor to sustain them during the early days of the century in their native North Carolina to Harlem and beyond.
They wrote "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years" with journalist Amy Hill Hearth. Published in 1993, it includes matter-of-fact references to the degradation they witnessed: the post-slavery years, segregation laws and violent racism. Bessie was nearly lynched once, as a young woman, after a run-in with a white at a railroad station.
There were triumphs, too -- their impressive family saga, their pride in the 1960s civil rights movement and their success in the world of work in an age when most women stayed home.
"I never let prejudice stop me from what I wanted to do in this life," Sadie once said.
The book sold millions and has become a high school and college text as well as a play.
"The best tribute we can pay to Ms. Sadie Delany and Dr. Bessie Delany is to honor the memory of what they were," said Camille Cosby, the wife of actor Bill Cosby and producer of a CBS made-for-television movie based on the sisters' book, which is to air in April.
The sisters, who described themselves as "best friends from Day One," and their eight brothers and sisters grew up on the campus of St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, N.C.
"Sadie is molasses without even trying," her sister once said. "She can sweet-talk the world, or play dumb or whatever it takes to get by without a fuss."