Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) was born enslaved and yet became a successful seamstress, civil activist, and author in Washington, DC.
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Before we get started with today’s episode, I want to let you know that it contains mentions of sexual assault and child abuse.
Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today we’re talking about a savvy businesswoman and skilled seamstress who catered to the who’s who of Washington, D.C. Unlike many of the women we’ve covered, she was not born into privilege. She was born enslaved and faced numerous traumatic setbacks. Still, with unwavering tenacity and perseverance she reached profound success and landed a coveted position in the White House. Here's the remarkable story of Elizabeth Keckley!
Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery in February 1818 in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Her mother Agnes had been raped by her enslaver, Colonel Armistead Burwell. However, Elizabeth’s parentage did not lead to any special treatment. Agnes’ husband, George Hobbs, who lived on a neighboring plantation, treated Elizabeth as his own and George was the only father Elizabeth knew.
Her childhood was riddled with emotional and physical abuse. The earliest incident of documented abuse occurred at the age of 5 when Elizabeth was badly whipped for accidentally knocking Burwell’s infant daughter out of her cradle while trying to soothe her. When Elizabeth was around 7 years old, Colonel Burwell told Elizabeth and Agnes that George Hobbs could come live with them. The women were giddy at the thought of all living together as a family. But then one day, the Colonel brought them a letter that said George had to go work for his enslaver in the West. The family had two hours to say their goodbyes before never seeing each other again.
Although life on the plantation was grueling, Elizabeth and Agnes had one advantage. Because Agnes was so well-liked by the family, they taught her how to read and write. Agnes passed that knowledge down to Elizabeth. It was only because of this skill that the two were able to send letters and correspond with George.
Seven years after being separated from her father, Elizabeth was torn away from her mother and forced to go work for Colonel Burwell’s son and his wife in North Carolina. The young couple looked for every reason to punish and degrade Elizabeth. They sent her to work for a neighbor who repeatedly raped her for four years. This resulted in the birth of Elizabeth’s only child in 1839 when Elizabeth was 21 years old. She named him George, after her father.
After ten years in North Carolina, Elizabeth and her son George were called back to Virginia. At that point, Colonel Burwell had passed away so Elizabeth, Agnes, and George lived with and worked for the Colonel’s daughter and her husband, Anne and Hugh Garland. The Garland family was in a lot of financial trouble, and eventually moved their family, as well as Elizabeth’s to St. Louis, Missouri in 1847 in hopes of finding prosperity.
That didn’t pan out and the Garland’s solution was to rent out Agnes’ time as a day servant. But Agnes was older and her health was failing, so Elizabeth offered up another plan. She proposed she use her seamstress skills, learned from her mother, as a means to provide for the family. Using Garland’s connections to white society, Elizabeth established a name for herself. Through shaking hands and rubbing elbows with St. Louis’s elite women, she built a loyal client network and took enough dress orders to support the Garland household. Her dresses were highly regarded as stylish, well-fitted, and very sophisticated.
In 1850, James Keckley, who presented as a free Black man, asked for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage. She initially declined his proposal because she knew that as an enslaved woman, any future children of hers would also be enslaved. After much back and forth, Garland agreed to allow Elizabeth to buy freedom for herself and George for $1,200, today’s equivalent of $40,000. With a tangible price attached to her freedom, Elizabeth agreed to marry James.
Because all the money from dressmaking went to the Garland family, it was very difficult for Elizabeth to raise $1,200. She decided to travel to New York to try to raise funds by appealing to abolitionists. Thankfully, the news of Elizabeth’s efforts spread among her clients and they helped raise the necessary funds. On November 15, 1855, Anne Garland signed the emancipation papers for Elizabeth and George’s freedom.
But Elizabeth and James’ marriage fell apart when Elizabeth learned that James was not in fact free, but rather a fugitive slave. During the dissolution of their marriage, Elizabeth’s mother died. Now with no ties to St. Louis, Elizabeth, a free Black woman and successful seamstress, used her earnings to pay back everyone who had donated to her freedom fund and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1860 to start a new chapter.
At first, Elizabeth struggled to get her footing in the nation’s capital as D.C. required her to obtain a work permit and a white person’s declaration that she was a free woman. But she used her network to overcome that hurdle and to rebuild her business. One former client introduced her to Varina Davis, wife of Senator Jefferson Davis. Varina hired Elizabeth as her personal stylist and seamstress. Elizabeth’s work caught the eye of Margaret McClean, who commissioned Elizabeth to make a dress for her dinner with President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Margaret was so pleased with Elizabeth’s work that she recommended her to the First Lady.
Impressed, Mary handpicked Elizabeth to serve as her dressmaker. Elizabeth made around 16 custom dresses for the First Lady each season. With her earnings, Elizabeth was able to open her own dress shop in the city and hire multiple seamstresses. Elizabeth’s dresses were known for their extraordinary fit, Parisian style elegance, and were the envy of women in Washington.
Over time, Elizabeth and Mary became close friends and confidants. Elizabeth had a front-row seat to the White House during the Civil War and to the intimate details of the President and First Lady’s lives. Elizabeth and Mary bonded over the shared trauma of recently losing a son; Willie Lincoln to typhoid fever and George Keckley to the battle at Wilson’s creek. When President Lincoln was assassinated, Mary requested that Elizabeth be brought to her bedside as she grieved.
Outside of work hours, Elizabeth founded the Contraband Relief Association in 1862 to aid formerly enslaved refugees flooding into D.C. during the war. The organization provided food, shelter, clothing, and medical assistance to recently freed slaves, who were considered contrabands of war. It was an organization created by Black people for Black people.
In 1866, Mary asked Elizabeth to help her sell some of her clothes to settle her debt. The two agreed to give the clothes to a man named William Brady who staged a public exposition to sell her wardrobe. This came at the cost of much criticism from the media and the general public. Elizabeth tried to support her friend by writing letters to prominent figures in the Black community, including Frederick Douglass, asking them to take up collections for Mary in their churches.
But in time, their friendship became strained. Elizabeth published Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House in 1868 with the intent of humanizing Mary and redeeming her character. But the memoir backfired and white Americans believed that Elizabeth broke social norms of race, class, and privacy. They used the memoir as a case for why Black women should not be educated. As a result of the publication, Elizabeth lost clients and her dressmaking business never completely regained its footing.
In 1892, Elizabeth moved to Ohio to head the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts at Wilberforce University. A year later, she resigned after suffering a stroke. She moved back to D.C. where she lived a modest life supported by the pension from her son’s Civil War service.
Elizabeth died in 1907 at the age of 89 in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, which she helped found.
Elizabeth’s life tells the story of a true survivor and free Black woman who took agency over her life and achieved extraordinary success.
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