The years 1889 and 1891 also saw the births of Sarah Louise Sadie Delany and Annie Elizabeth Bessie Delany. The two sisters spent the next 104 years together. The younger Bessie died Sept. 25, 1995 at the age of 104.

The siblings’ prolonged relationship introduced itself to the public after Amy Hill Hearth, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote an article on the sisters and then helped them write their best-selling memoir Having Our Say.

The book has since been adapted for theater, and people will be able to see Having Our Say at 8 p.m. tonight on the stage of Shryock Auditorium.

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The play captures the sisters when the book was published in 1993 and shows audiences that there was more to these women than longevity. For instance, Bessie and Sadie both received college educations in an era when middle-class whites rarely received degrees let alone African-American women.

The interviews between Hearth and the Delany sisters, as well as the subsequent book and play, show that the bond between the three went further than that of a typical interviewer/interviewee conversation.

After [Hearth] interviewed the sisters, there was some kind of connection that happened between my sister and these two sisters, said Hearth’s brother Jonathan D. Hill, an anthropology professor at SIUC. If you’ve read the book, you can feel it just leaping off the page that they hit it off in a real big way.

As an anthropologist, Hill sees the subtle way his sister went about gathering information from the Delanys as a key ingredient to the trust that was built between the three of them. Hearth felt her way into the sisters’ culture rather than barging in with an ax, hungry for a story.

Because of the tender age of the women, Hearth became protective of them, which Hill said is very similar to what he does in anthropology.

Our first rule in [anthropology] ethics is do no harm,’ and maybe that’s all we can do is try to do no harm and do what we have to prevent our writings and filmmakings from being an onslaught of unwanted attention from the outside world, he said.

The sisters were 101 and 103 in 1991 (when the first story ran in the Times), and you can’t take for granted if the press unmatched were to descend on these old women they would literally die from the intrusion and obstruction in their lives.

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One factor that played out to be a major impediment to the lives of Bessie and Sadie was when the Jim Crow Laws initiated a lower status for African-Americans in 1914. Growing up in the South, the sisters could no longer make simple trips to the general store for ice cream because they could no longer be served.

Sharon Hope, who plays Bessie in the performance of Having Our Say, finds relating to certain emotions Bessie felt comes naturally. Hope understands how the depression Bessie suffered could come about while adapting to the Jim Crow Laws.

Bessie often would come home in tears after being denied service at stores that she had always gone to while growing up. Hope said Bessie cried tears of rage from a feeling of hopelessness more than she cried tears of sorrow.

That cry is more of anger than anything else because you can’t do anything about it, Hope said. Your parents can’t do anything about it. The people that are supposed to be doing something about it are the ones doing it, and there’s no place to go. There’s no relief.

It’s such an anger built up in there, and I have felt that before, so I really relate to that very well.

The sisters pulled through the difficult times and survived on top. Bessie graduated from the School of Dental and Oral Surgery at Columbia University in 1923, and Sadie earned a master’s degree in education at Columbia in 1925.

Hope discovered playing a woman of such a mature and seasoned age takes a lot of energy because of the focus and concentration required to stretch herself from energetic actress to a century-old woman.

Capturing Bessie’s natural character inspires more than an interesting personality profile for Hope.

For me, it’s an actor’s dream. This is the kind of thing that as an actor I really want to do, Hope said. What I think I’m blessed with is that I get to do a role that’s decent, and I’m proud to have people come see it.

The words that come out of her mouth are words I haven’t said in my lifetime.

A life lived as for more than a century offers a lot of stories to tell. But the Delany sisters’ stories cover some of the most moving, trying and troubled times in the history of the United States. The fact that these women endured the times, and people have the chance to hear the stories on stage could prove motivational to those who need encouragement.

[The Delany sisters] were part of 10 children. The family didn’t have money, but they all went to college. They overcame odds that were totally stacked against them, such as being the only black female at a university, Hope said.

So the kids nowadays even if they did come from backgrounds aren’t all that great could see there’s no way you can’t do something that you really want to do.

Factoid:Tickets for Having Our Say are $16.50 and $14.50. For information, call 453-ARTS (2787).