" We never had husbands to worry us to death"

In 1917, the two sisters made their way to New York City. 

Bessie had planned to become a doctor but ultimately decided to go to dental school.

 She graduated from Columbia University in 1923 and became the second black woman to work as a dentist in New York.

Known as "Dr. Bessie, Harlem's colored woman dentist," Dr. Delany socialized with Cab Calloway, W. E. B. Du Bois and the doyennes of the Harlem Renaissance. 

She treated many of Harlem's poor, and in 27 years of practice never raised her rates. 
It was $2 for a cleaning and $5 for a silver filling, from 1923 until the day she retired, in 1950.

...'Having our say: the Delany sisters first hundred years'