Sarah Delaney; Memoirist Was 109

Sarah Delany, who with her sister wrote a best-selling memoir on growing up black before the civil rights era, died Monday. She was 109.

Delany died in her sleep at her home in Mount Vernon, N.Y., said her nephew, Harry Delany.

Delany and her sister, who died in 1995 at the age of 106, wrote “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years,” with journalist Amy Hill Hearth. It was published in 1993. The reminiscence, by turns poignant and playful, has become a high school and college text as well as a play, “Having Our Say,” which ran on Broadway in 1995.

Delany, who was known as Sadie, was the oldest sister of 10 children who grew up in Raleigh, N.C., where her father, freed from slavery at age 7, became a school vice principal and the nation’s first elected black Episcopal bishop.

She and her sister, Bessie, documented the iron determination of two black women not only to survive but to thrive. In their 20s, both women moved to New York and began successful careers--Sarah as a high school teacher, Bessie as a dentist. The Delany sisters lived their entire lives together, the last 38 years in Mount Vernon.

A more complete obituary will appear in Wednesday’s editions of The Times.