The DAR Museum commemorates Black History month by exploring the lives of five Black Americans from throughout our history: David Drake, Elizabeth Keckley, John Denny, Lewis Latimer, and Gabriel Prosser, by hosting two virtual events on February 21 and 22, 2022. You are invited to these DAR Museum events by going to the link at https://www.dar.org/museum/education/calendar-events.

One of the featured Black Americans, Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) had an extraordinary life. She was a former slave and became a successful seamstress, civil activist, and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste (seamstress) and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady.

As an enslaved woman, Elizabeth Keckley was owned by her father, Armistead Burwell, and later his daughter who was her half-sister, Anne Burwell Garland. 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 Garland family.

In November 1855, Elizabeth Keckley purchased her and her son’s freedom in St. Louis, Missouri. She 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, wife of Jefferson Davis, and Mary Anna Custis Lee, 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 (1868). It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the First Family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and it was considered controversial as to the extent of information shared about the Lincolns’ private lives. Jennifer Larisey, State Chair, DAR Museum Outreach Committee