"It took me a hundred years to figure out I can't change the world. I can only change Bessie."

Bessie Delany was the third of ten children born to the Rt. Rev. Henry Beard Delany (1858–1928), the first Black person elected Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, and Nanny Logan Delany (1861–1956), an educator.

Her father, H.B. Delany was born into slavery in St. Mary's, Georgia. Her mother, Nanny Logan Delany was born in a community then known as Yak, Virginia, seven miles from Danville. Bessie Delany was born and raised on the campus of St. Augustine's School (now University) in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her father was the Vice-Principal and her mother, a teacher and administrator.

Delany was a 1911 graduate of the school. In 1918, she followed her sister Sadie to New York City, enrolling at Columbia University, from which she earned her dental degree in 1923. Of 170 students in her graduating class, she was the only Black woman. She shared a dental office with her brother, Dr. H. B. Delany Jr., at 2305 Seventh Avenue, and later, 2303 Seventh Avenue, in Harlem, NY.

Throughout her life, Bessie, participated in many protests and marches, and encouraged civil rights organizers to meet at her and her brother's office. A mainstay in the Harlem community for much of the twentieth century, "Bessie" Delany came to broader public attention only after the age of 100, when she and her sister, Sarah "Sadie" Delany (1889-1999), a retired teacher, were approached by New York Times reporter Amy Hill Hearth.

Following the publication of a newspaper story by Hearth, the threesome collaborated on Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, a best-seller acclaimed as a portrait of a century of African American life and a self-portrait of pioneering Black professional women.
It was adapted for Broadway in 1995.

The sisters, two of 10 children born to a former slave who became the first African American Episcopal bishop, witnessed the growth of New York's African American community from the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance through the civil rights era and into the modern age.

Bessie and Sadie Delany came to New York during the First World War from Jim Crow-era North Carolina, where they were educated at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, NC. Bessie became one of only 11 women, and the only African American woman, out of 170 students in the 1919 entering class of the Columbia School of Dental and Oral Surgery.

She earned her DDS degree in 1923, and was soon the second Black woman dentist licensed in the State of New York. During Harlem's heyday, Bessie looked after the teeth of such luminaries as nightclub owner Ed Small, civil rights leader Louis T. Wright, and author James Weldon Johnson.

Widely known throughout the community as "Dr. Bessie," she treated the rich and poor equally, and performed thousands of free children's dental exams. In 1994, Columbia's School of Dental and Oral Surgery awarded her its Distinguished Alumna Award for "her pioneering work as a minority woman in dentistry."

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In 1991, Delany and her sister Sadie were interviewed by journalist Amy Hill Hearth, who wrote a feature story about them for The New York Times. A New York book publisher read Hearth's newspaper story and asked her to write a full-length book on the sisters. Hearth and the sisters worked closely for two years to create the book, Having our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, which dealt with the trials and tribulations the sisters had faced during their century of life.

The book was on The New York Times bestseller lists for 105 weeks. It spawned a Broadway play in 1995 and a television film in 1999. Both the play and film adaptations were produced by Judith R. James and Dr. Camille O. Cosby.

In 1994, the sisters and Hearth published The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom, a follow up to Having Our Say. After Bessie's death, Sadie Delany and Hearth created a third book, On my Own at 107; Reflections on Life Without Bessie.

Bessie Delany died at the age of 104 in Mount Vernon, New York, where she had long resided. She is interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Her siblings were:

Lemuel Thackara Delany (1887–1956)
Sarah Louise ("Sadie") Delany (1889–1999)
Julia Emery Delany (1893–1974)
Henry Delany, Jr. (1895–1991)
Lucius Delany (1897–1969)
William Manross Delany (1899–1955)
Hubert Thomas Delany (1901–1990)
Laura Edith Delany (1903–1993)
Samuel Ray Delany (1906–1960)

Source: http://c250.columbia.edu/.../remarkable.../annie_delany.html

Source: https://alchetron.com/Annie-Elizabeth-Delany

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Elizabeth_Delany