The Real Delany Sisters

This interview by correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault was broadcast on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in 1994. Subjects include life in the South for African-Americans in the early 20th century, coping with the implementation of the Jim Crow laws, and bigotry in the North. Bessie touches on what it was like to grow up with a father who recalled slavery and the arrival of freedom after the Confederate surrender. Sarah tells how as a young woman, she defended herself against a drunk white man at a Georgia train station and how she found ways around the institutionalized racism in New York City's education system. (Films for the Humanities & Sciences, copyright 2009.)