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The Life and Afterlife of Elizabeth Keckly
September 7, 2024 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm EDT
Born enslaved, Keckly was Mary Todd Lincoln’s confidant during the Civil War
Born enslaved in Virginia, Keckly managed to purchase her own freedom and eventually become Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress. Keckly wrote a book about those experiences, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, which was considered radical for the time as it revealed details that eventually soured her relationship with Mrs. Lincoln.
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Michelle A. Krowl is the Civil War and Reconstruction specialist in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. She received a B.A. in History from the University of California, Riverside, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of several articles and books on topics relating to the Civil War, as well as Quantico, Virginia and the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. She has worked as a library assistant at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., an assistant professor at Northern Virginia Community College, and as a research assistant for historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
