Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (February 1818 – May 1907) was an African-American seamstress, activist, and writer who lived in Washington, D.C. She was the personal dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln. She wrote an autobiography. Elizabeth also started the Contraband Relief Association in August 1862, later called the Ladies’ Freedmen and Soldiers’ Relief Association, to help formerly enslaved people and the families of Black soldiers during the Civil War.

She was born enslaved to Armistead Burwell who had also fathered her. Keckley would later be bound to Armistead's daughter Anne Burwell Garland, the wife of Hugh A. Garland. She became a nursemaid to an infant when she was four years old. She received brutal treatment—including being raped and whipped to the point of bleeding welts—from Burwell's family members and a family friend. When she became a seamstress, the Garland family found that it was financially advantageous to have her make clothes for others. The money that she made helped to support the 17 members of the Garland family.

In November 1855, she purchased her and her son's freedom in St. Louis, Missouri. Keckley moved to Washington, D.C., in 1860. She established a dressmaking business that grew to include a staff of 20 seamstresses. Her clients were the wives of elite politicians, including Varina Davis, the wife of Jefferson Davis, and Mary Anna Custis Lee, the wife of Robert E. Lee.

After the American Civil War, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, in 1868. It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the first family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and it was controversial because of information it disclosed about the Lincolns' private lives.