Main Cast: Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, Amy Madigan, Lisa Anderson, Audra McDonald
Release Year: 1999
Country: US
Run Time: 120 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Based on the best-selling book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth, which was later adapted into a Broadway play, Having Our Say tells the true story of the Delany Sisters, two African-American women who were fathered by a former slave, went on to attend college, and witnessed the slow but steady advance of civil rights in America before a reporter for The New York Times sat down with them to record their story. In the film version, 103-year-old Sadie (Diahann Carroll) is a polite and soft-spoken woman who deals cheerfully with the questions of journalist Amy Hill Hearth (Amy Madigan). Sadie's considerably more feisty 101-year-old sister (and housemate) Bessie (Ruby Dee) grumbles about "white people who ask you to explain the obvious to them," but soon adds her own stories as the Delanys discuss their quietly remarkable lives as career women and racial pioneers who not only survived Jim Crow laws, they outlived Jim Crow, as well. Produced for CBS Television, Having Our Say was first aired April 18, 1999. Incidentally, Bessie Delany died in 1995 at age 104, while Sadie, at 110, passed on in 1999, only a few months before this was first aired. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Joe DeOliveira - Associate Producer, Shay Griffin - Casting, Jaki Brown - Casting, Chez Group - Casting, Roseanne Leto - Co-producer, Rita Riggs - Costume Designer, Lynne Littman - Director, Brent White - Editor, Judith James - Executive Producer, Camille O. Cosby - Executive Producer, Jeffrey S. Grant - Executive Producer, Terence Blanchard - Composer (Music Score), AFX Studio - Makeup, Charles C. Bennett - Production Designer, Frank Byers - Cinematographer, Tony Amatullo - Producer, Preston Fischer - Supervisor/Manager, Albert Edmund Lord III - Supervising Sound Editor, A. Elizabeth Delany - Book Author, Sarah L. Delany - Book Author, Amy Hill Hearth - Book Author
