Dr. Elizabeth Delany and Sarah Delany were born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the campus of St. Augustine's College. Their father, born into slavery and freed by the Emancipation, was an administrator at the college and  America's first elected black Episcopal bishop. Sarah received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Teachers College at Columbia University and was New York City's first appointed black home economics teacher on the high school level.  Elizabeth received her degree in dentistry from Columbia University and was the second black woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York City. The sisters retired to Mt. Vernon, New York,  where Sarah, 108, still lives today. Dr. Elizabeth Delany died in September 1995, at the age of 104.

Amy Hill Hearth is a Westchester correspondent for The New York Times.