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Elizabeth Keckley
Dressmaker. Author. Entrepreneur. Advocate.
Her Story
Elizabeth Keckley was born enslaved in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. She and her mother were enslaved in the household of Colonel Armistead Burwell. Though Elizabeth grew up believing an enslaved Black man was her father, she later learned that Burwell himself was her biological father.
At the age of four, Elizabeth’s mother taught her how to sew. What began as a childhood lesson became the skill that would shape the course of her life. Elizabeth sharpened and mastered the art of dressmaking, and her talent became so valuable that it substantially supported the households of those who enslaved her.
As a young woman, Elizabeth endured cruelty, humiliation, and violence. When she was sent to live with Burwell’s son and daughter-in-law, she encountered a woman who resented her confidence and sought to have her “broken.” Elizabeth was sent to a man who repeatedly stripped and whipped her. In her memoir, Elizabeth remembered refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. When the man later apologized and asked for forgiveness, she responded that the matter was between him and God.
Elizabeth also survived sexual violence and gave birth to one son, George. She never dignified the man who assaulted her by naming him in her memoir.
Eventually, Elizabeth and her mother were sent to St. Louis to live with another branch of the Burwell family. When that household faced financial difficulty and considered hiring out her aging mother, Elizabeth stepped forward. She offered to use her sewing to support the entire household herself. Through her labor and extraordinary skill, she supported a household of fourteen people.
Elizabeth eventually determined that she would purchase freedom for herself and her son. The price was $1,200, an enormous sum at the time. With help from women who were her clients and patrons, she was able to borrow the money, purchase her freedom and her son’s freedom, and then repay the debt through her work.
After settling her debts, Elizabeth moved to Washington, D.C., where she entered a thriving free Black community and built an extraordinary career. Her dressmaking business flourished. She employed other seamstresses and gained prominent clients, including the wives of powerful political leaders. Through referrals, she eventually became dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln.
Elizabeth Keckley became more than Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker. She became her friend and confidante. She witnessed the grief, pressures, and private struggles of the Lincoln family, including the death of their son Willie. Elizabeth herself also knew the devastating pain of losing a son. Her son George enlisted in the Union Army and died in battle.
During the Civil War, Elizabeth also founded the Contraband Relief Association to support formerly enslaved people who had escaped to Union lines. She helped provide food, clothing, blankets, and other necessities to freedom seekers in need. Through this work, she used her position, relationships, and resources to serve others who were walking into freedom.
After President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln faced financial hardship and public scrutiny. Elizabeth attempted to help her, but the effort became entangled in scandal. Elizabeth later published her memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. The book shared her own life story, as well as her experiences with the Lincolns. Mary Todd Lincoln felt betrayed by some of the details included, and their friendship was severed.
Elizabeth Keckley’s life was marked by pain, brilliance, resilience, and reinvention. She transformed a skill taught to her in childhood into a pathway to freedom, entrepreneurship, advocacy, and authorship. She sewed her way from enslavement to the White House and used her gifts to help others move toward freedom as well.
Elizabeth Keckley’s memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, came at great personal cost. For many years, her story was often summarized through the lens of Mary Todd Lincoln’s perceived betrayal, the scandal surrounding the book, and the damage it caused to Elizabeth’s business and reputation. But when read closely, Elizabeth’s memoir reveals something much more tender and courageous. She was not trying to destroy Mrs. Lincoln. She was telling her story.
Through her writing, Elizabeth invited the world into the hidden rooms of her own life: enslavement, motherhood, violence, skill, freedom, grief, friendship, service, and survival. Her memoir was another creation, another sacrifice, and another offering. Because she chose to write, generations after her are able to know her voice, her heart, and the interconnectedness of her remarkable life.
In the later years of her life, Elizabeth Keckley’s path came full circle. One of the institutions she helped establish to care for destitute elderly African American women became the place where she spent her final days. The woman who had used her hands, labor, leadership, and resources to help others in need would one day be cared for by the very kind of work she had helped make possible.
Her life reminds us that the seeds we sow may one day bear fruit we ourselves need to eat.
The Brick She Built
Elizabeth Keckley built the brick of skill, dignity, and self-determination.
She took the very labor that was once exploited by others and turned it into the foundation for her freedom. Her hands created garments for some of the most powerful women in the country, but they also created opportunity, protection, and possibility for herself, her son, and other freedom seekers.
Elizabeth’s story reminds us that artistry can be more than beauty. It can be survival. It can be business. It can be resistance. It can be a way to reclaim ownership over one’s life.
She also built a brick of advocacy. Through the Contraband Relief Association, she did not simply celebrate her own freedom. She worked to help others who were newly free, displaced, hungry, and in need of care. Elizabeth Keckley understood that freedom required community, resources, and support.
Her life teaches us that dignity can remain intact even when others try to strip it away. She refused to be broken. She refused to let bondage define the limits of her future. She used her gift to build a life, a legacy, and a testimony.
From Archive to Stage
Elizabeth Keckley’s story is one of the most layered and emotionally complex stories in Bricks Without Straw: Virginia’s Finest. In bringing her to the stage, I wanted to honor both her brilliance and her pain.
The monologue does not focus only on the beauty of the dresses she created or the fact that she became Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker. It also acknowledges the cost of her journey: the violence she endured, the separation from family, the burden of supporting the households of those who enslaved her, the grief of losing her son, the public consequences of telling her story, and the full-circle ending of her life.
When I first learned about Elizabeth Keckley through summaries and brief articles, I misunderstood parts of her story. I wondered whether writing her memoir had cost her too much. I wondered whether she should have written it at all. But after reading her book closely, more than once, I saw something different. Elizabeth Keckley was not writing with malice. She was telling the truth of what happened. She told her story with dignity, clarity, and, at times, a tenderness that reveals her heart.
That changed the way I saw her.
Her memoir became, to me, another garment she created. Not one made of silk, satin, or thread, but one stitched together with memory, grief, courage, and truth. It was a sacrifice, but it was also a gift. Without it, we would not know her story in her own words. We would not understand the fullness of her journey from Dinwiddie County to St. Louis, from freedom to Washington, D.C., from the White House to public scandal, and from service to the very institution of care she helped make possible.
On stage, I wanted the audience to see a woman whose hands carried memory. Every stitch represented more than fabric. It represented survival, excellence, strategy, faith, and liberation.
Elizabeth Keckley reminds me that our gifts can open doors, but they can also become tools of freedom. Her story challenges me to consider what we are sewing with our lives, what we are building with our hands, what truths we are brave enough to tell, and who we are helping along the way.
I would encourage everyone to read her book.