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We have chosen Elizabeth Keckley to add to this Wish List in part due to the understudied status of the 1868 memoir, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, she published almost twenty years after purchasing her own and her son’s freedom. While there is scholarship on Keckley, her text is typically bypassed in general education in favor of well-known slave narratives like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

Written by Himself or Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Slave narratives follow a set of standard tropes: a discussion of the author’s time while enslaved, an escape or purchase of their own freedom, and a confrontation with the reality of racism in the North. While Behind the Scenes includes these tropes, Keckley’s time while enslaved covers only four chapters of twenty-five.

Keckley focuses a majority of her memoir on her work as a dressmaker and her relationships with elite white women. Effectively, as scholar Santamarina explicates, Behind the Scenes is both slave narrative and memoir; Santamarina asserts, “Behind the Scenes focuses mainly on demonstrating how a slave woman might recast the coercions of slave labor so as to produce herself as an agent rather than solely as a victim of bondage” (518). The construction of Behind the Scenes as both slave narrative and memoir enables Keckley to reclaim her own narrative in a way that does not essentialize her as merely a victim of enslavement, while still demonstrating how growing up enslaved affects the rest of her life.

In addition to reclaiming her own story, Keckley details her perceptions and experiences of the Civil War era, as well as the subsequent period of Reconstruction. In this way, Keckley establishes herself, Janaka Lewis theorizes, “as American historian and first-hand witness” (5). To this end, Keckley often stresses the truth in her narrative. Born into enslavement in 1818 in Virginia, Keckley explains that her memories of her childhood “are distinct, perhaps for the reason that many stirring incidents are associated with that period” (17). These “stirring incidents” likely refer to the abusive trauma she endures at the hands of her enslavers while growing up. Keckley’s inability to forget these traumas supports her claim that there is a “dark side” of enslavement, and establishes her memoir as testimony fr

As a first-hand witness to the antebellum period, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, when “southerners who sought to assert their authority over the former slaves promoted stereotypes of freedmen as ‘lazy’ and unwilling to work,” Keckley challenges dominant understandings about gendered labor for Black and enslaved women (Santamarina 516). She also deconstructs dominant understandings about friendships between Black and white women during the mid- nineteenth century. Santamarina makes clear that “Keckley insisted on the potential for intimacy and loyalty between white and black women,” most prominently through her friendships with the Garlands, Varina Davis, and Mary Todd Lincoln. Although we do not discuss the “Old Clothes Scandal” involving Mary Todd Lincoln beyond a short overview in the following two paragraphs, we do examine the classed, racialized, and gendered dynamics of Mary Todd and Keckley’s relationship. This examination demonstrates Keckley’s repeated challenges to the institution of enslavement, racial essentialisms, and the binary of opposition between Black women and white women.

The “Old Clothes Scandal” refers to Mary Todd Lincoln’s attempts to sell her used wardrobe to pay off debts that had grown exponentially by the time President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Her attempts to sell the wardrobe of dresses were received poorly by the media, and Mary Todd’s old wardrobe became one of the first national gossip obsessions. On this subject, Keckley asserts, “Mrs. Lincoln may have been imprudent, but since her intentions were good, she should be judged more kindly than she has been” (xiv). Keckley wills audiences to consider Mary Todd’s intentions rather than the results, which was Keckley’s effort to decrease the public ridicule of Mary Todd. She includes stories and letters from Mary Todd because, as she explains, “my own character, as well as the character of Mrs. Lincoln, is at stake, since I have been intimately associated with that lady in the most eventful periods of her life,” including the death of the Lincolns’ son, Willie, as well as President Lincoln’s assassination (xiv). Character is a theme of Keckley’s memoir because it is a major tenet of Keckley’s morals; she clearly believes Mary Todd and others she remains close to throughout her life possess good character, and means to depict this, even if some of those folks were her previous masters or against ideas of abolition.

However, Keckley’s plan to show Mary Todd’s character backfires; after her memoir is published in 1868, Keckley receives more backlash than even Mary Todd, including Mary Todd’s own denunciation of their friendship—a move representative of how Mary Todd, as a white woman, believed her friendship with Keckley should remain private. In addition, Robert Lincoln, Mary Todd’s son, had the memoir removed from print. So intense was the scrutiny of Behind the Scenes that contemporary scholars continue to focus heavily on Keckley and Mary Todd’s relationship, often excluding from discourse Keckley’s enslavement, work towards gaining her freedom, and ideas about racial relations. As such, in this Author Page, we focus on Keckley’s time while enslaved, her time as a dressmaker when she recognizes the value of her own labor, and her discussions of her son, the Garlands, Mary Todd, and Varina to analyze how race, class, and gender function in this era from Keckley’s perspective. Finally, we discuss how we might imagine Elizabeth Keckley as an exhibitor at the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884, through both her work as a writer and as a dressmaker.

From the beginning of her time as a dressmaker while enslaved by the Garlands, Keckley’s social connections with white southerners help her gain new clients and increase her social value. With increased social value among her white clients, Keckley was eventually able to purchase her freedom and support herself and son. Keckley marketed her dressmaking through social connections to establish herself as a legitimate business owner in command of her craft. This practice of marketing herself can be analogized to the effects of Black Americans being able to exhibit their goods at the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884, the first fair in which Black Americans could participate on their own terms. In 1884, Black Americans eagerly displayed their aptitude, in spite of many remaining barriers. While many Black Americans chose to exhibit at the fair to advertise their skills and establish themselves as legitimate parts of the United States economy, segregation at the fair—the creation of the Colored Department, and the exclusion of Black women from exhibiting with the Woman’s Department—may have dissuaded Black Americans from marketing their products, thus also inhibiting their ability to integrate into the U.S. economy. Further, while some newspapers called for Black women to submit exhibits to the New Orleans fair, very few Black women have been positively identified as having done so. Due to these conditions, racist treatment on the railroads leading to the fair, and general fear about traveling South as Black folks, not many Black women were afforded a chance to exhibit at the fair. While these barriers prevented Keckley and unknown numbers of other Black women from presenting their work, today we can reconsider Keckley’s work as a writer and dressmaker to imagine her as an exhibitor at the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884.

From the beginning of her time as a dressmaker while enslaved by the Garlands, Keckley’s social connections with white southerners help her gain new clients and increase her social value. With increased social value among her white clients, Keckley was eventually able to purchase her freedom and support herself and son. Keckley marketed her dressmaking through social connections to establish herself as a legitimate business owner in command of her craft. This practice of marketing herself can be analogized to the effects of Black Americans being able to exhibit their goods at the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884, the first fair in which Black Americans could participate on their own terms. In 1884, Black Americans eagerly displayed their aptitude, in spite of many remaining barriers. While many Black Americans chose to exhibit at the fair to advertise their skills and establish themselves as legitimate parts of the United States economy, segregation at the fair—the creation of the Colored Department, and the exclusion of Black women from exhibiting with the Woman’s Department—may have dissuaded Black Americans from marketing their products, thus also inhibiting their ability to integrate into the U.S. economy. Further, while some newspapers called for Black women to submit exhibits to the New Orleans fair, very few Black women have been positively identified as having done so. Due to these conditions, racist treatment on the railroads leading to the fair, and general fear about traveling South as Black folks, not many Black women were afforded a chance to exhibit at the fair. While these barriers prevented Keckley and unknown numbers of other Black women from presenting their work, today we can reconsider Keckley’s work as a writer and dressmaker to imagine her as an exhibitor at the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884.

While working within the literary conventions of the nineteenth century, Keckley both overtly and covertly challenges the racial order in her content. For example, after giving birth—an unwanted pregnancy forced on her by a white man—Keckley considers her son’s mixed heritage and how her position as his mother causes him to be enslaved. She laments,

The Anglo-Saxon blood as well as the African flowed in his veins; the two currents
commingled–one singing of freedom, the other silent and sullen with generations of
despair. Why should not the Anglo-Saxon triumph–why should it be weighed down with
the rich blood typical of the tropics? Must the life-current of one race bind the other race
in chains as strong and enduring as if there had been no Anglo-Saxon taint? (47).

With intimate knowledge about white Americans’ construction of whiteness as the superior race in antebellum society, Keckley questions how her son’s “Anglo-Saxon blood” or whiteness, if it is such a powerful race, does not counteract his Blackness or what she calls his “African blood.” How can her son be of both Black and white heritage but still not be free? Effectively, Keckley’s questions allude to the falsity of the racial binary and white Americans’ use of that binary to uphold the white supremacist hierarchy and enslavement. Unable to answer these “questions of [her] heart that almost maddened [her],” Keckley “learned to regard human philosophy with distrust” (Keckley 47-48). Rather than adhere to a racist system that essentialized and thus enslaved those with Black heritage, Keckley puts her own understanding of racial relations–her distrust of human philosophy–into practice through her considerations of her white clients and old masters as her friends. Keckley does not ignore the racial divide between herself and her clients but chooses to judge each white person in her memoir for their character rather than their race; in effect, her refusals to essentialize white women perform a critique of white Americans’ essentializing of Black Americans.

Further exemplifying her rejection of essentialisms, Keckley claims, “If I have portrayed the dark side of slavery, I also have painted the bright side” (xi). Rather than an endorsement of enslavement, Keckley’s refusal to essentialize her enslavement as only “dark” is also a refusal to essentialize herself as only a victim. By framing her time in enslavement as dark and light—a spectrum of human experience—Keckley positions herself as agent and subject; most important, Keckley reclaims her own humanity.

Keckley recounts that while she was enslaved her father was permanently separated from her and her mother, Agnes. She juxtaposes that memory with the demands of Colonel Burwell, who “never liked to see one of his slaves wear a sorrowful face, and those who offended in this particular way were always punished. Alas! the sunny face of the slave is not always an indication of sunshine in the heart” (29). In the eyes of men like Burwell, ownership, as Keckley explains, take precedence over every aspect of enslaved folks’ lives, including their emotions and how they put those emotions on display. While she argues that “time seemed to soften the hearts of master and mistress,” she also recalls that, when her uncle—Agnes’ brother—lost his shoes, Burwell bought him another pair but threatened punishment if these were lost as well. Eventually, “rather than be punished the way Colonel Burwell punished his servants, [Keckley’s uncle] took his own life. Slavery had its dark side as well as its bright side” (30). Reiterating her statement after a painful loss, it seems Keckley means to ensure that her readers do not assume that, because she has offered a bright side, the dark side of enslavement is any less horrific.

To further demonstrate the harsh reality of her upbringing, Keckley discusses the first time she was punished four years old, when the Burwells charged her with taking care of their baby, Elizabeth. After Elizabeth falls out of her crib, Keckley attempts to return her using the fire- shovel: “Trying to shovel up my tender charge, […] my mistress called to me to let the child alone, then ordered that I be taken out and lashed for my carelessness” (20). As a result, Keckley’s first time being punished is also the first time her mistress, a white woman, specifically orders her to be punished. Being targeted by her mistress is an experience Keckley reports having again when she leaves Virginia to live with the Burwells’ “eldest son, a Presbyterian minister” in North Carolina, where she stays from fourteen to eighteen years old (31).

Like Harriet Jacobs’s mistress in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, who was unnaturally cruel to Jacobs, Keckley’s mistress “seemed to be desirous to wreak vengeance on [her] for something, and Bingham became her ready tool” (32).

Her mistress often wills Bingham, the local schoolmaster, to abuse her for seemingly no reason. We note these examples for two reasons: first, it was common in the antebellum period for white wives of slave masters to grow jealous of enslaved Black women because it was also common for white male slave owners to sexually assault the Black women they enslaved, which could be why Keckley’s mistress targets her. I do not assume that Burwell sexually assaulted Keckley; but if that were the case, Keckley may understand why her mistress is “desirous to wreak vengeance on [her].” Still, recognizing how white men’s desire for (and resulting harassment of) enslaved Black women was often linked to patterns of cruelty from white women toward Black women is necessary to understanding the dynamic Keckley tries to depict. The second reason we discuss the cruelty of Keckley’s white mistresses is to place it in juxtaposition with her insistence on the possibility for loyalty and intimacy between Black and white women, truly befriending the elite white women who later became her clients. Keckley’s refusal to essentialize all white women to be like those who abused her as a child and young adult works as a critique of the institution of enslavement as well as white women’s racism, which pits white and Black women against each other, inhibiting solidarity for women’s liberation across races. Rather than enforce binaries of opposition due to experiences with white women as a child, Keckley befriends white women throughout her adulthood and differentiates between them and white women who are complicit in Black women’s mistreatment.

Keckley’s discussion of her unwanted pregnancy is another critique she levels at the institution of enslavement, as well as a memory that brings her deep pain. She explains that she became a target for sexual abuse because she “was regarded as fair-looking for one of [her] race” (38-39). Although she does not go into detail about the four years of abuse she experiences at the hands of a white man, she makes it clear he rapes her, and that her son is a product of that rape. Keckley explicates, “I do not care to dwell upon this subject, for it is one that is fraught with pain. Suffice to say that [the father of my child] persecuted me for four years, and I-I- became a mother” (39). Keckley’s expression of her pain not only comes through her stating this subject “is one fraught with pain” but also her use of stuttering, the only time she deploys this kind of writing across her autobiography. Again, Keckley suggests these memories are so viscerally painful for her, that she feels them as she writes them, making her very pen stutter on the page.

Further explaining her unwanted pregnancy, Keckley writes that if her son ever suffers during his life, he should not blame her as his mother, “for God knows that she did not wish to give him life; he must blame the edicts of that society which deemed it no crime to undermine the virtue of girls in my then position” (Keckley 39). Similar to her assertion in the preface that she cannot blame her masters for the institution of enslavement, but must instead blame the system itself, Keckley argues that her son must blame the institution of enslavement for his being brought into a world of suffering, as the law states that enslaved girls and women were incapable of consent, thus legally establishing Keckley as someone unable to resist rape of any kind.

Her time with the Burwells in North Carolina ended when Keckley moves back to Virginia to live with her enslaver’s daughter, Ann Burwell, and her husband, Hugh Garland. When her new enslavers, disappointed with their life in Virginia, leave the state to go to St. Louis, Keckley must join them (43). It is in St. Louis that Keckley begins seriously pursuing her work as a dressmaker. In hopes of making money, Hugh Garland travels to St. Louis before the rest of his family; however, Keckley explains, “when [Garland’s] family, myself included, joined him in his new home on the banks of the Mississippi, we found him so poor that he was unable to pay the dues on a letter advertised as in the post-office for him” (44). Because he was the family’s main source of income, they were left with nothing, and “it was proposed to place [Keckley’s] mother out at service” to work for the family’s money. When the Garlands suggest Agnes work for them, however, Keckley asserts, “I would rather work my fingers to the bone, bend over my sewing till the film of blindness gathered in my eyes; nay, even beg from street to street” than let her mother labor in such a way (45). As such, Keckley takes her mother’s place. Thus begins Keckley’s endeavors as a dressmaker, as well as her ability to take control of and find value in her own labor.

Due to her enslavement, Keckley’s labor was legally not her own; however, the act of creating from her own hands represents a command and ownership over her labor and craft that is unshakeable. As Lewis contends, “she knows that she is not the primary beneficiary of her work, as she embarks upon this ‘career’ because she has to help her master’s family. She understands, however, that she commands her craft. Her artistry contributes to her standing in the community, which shows that Keckley considers herself a cut above forced labor” (7). While still enslaved, Keckley values herself at a level above enslaved work because her creativity and skills in constructing dresses provide her with her own social connections and money with which she supports the Garlands—all seventeen of them. Without her dressmaking skills, Keckley realizes, the Garlands would not be able to sustain themselves financially. This consideration – that she is the main source of income for her masters’ family – signifies the beginning of Keckley’s recognition of her economic and social value.

In fact, Keckley’s recognition of her economic power combined with the bleak understanding that, while enslaved, she would receive nothing from her labor, drives her to secure her freedom (Lewis 8). As Lewis contends, “Keckley uses the results of her labor–the number of people she is able to support–as a means of calculating what she is worth, then measures the social status her labor allows for them against her own” (8). Referring to this moment as the ultimate turning point, Lewis theorizes that when Keckley tabulates and realizes her value to the family as representative of her own value as a person, she decides to work for herself and her own motivation: freedom.

As a result, Keckley asks Mr. Garland if she can buy her and her son’s freedom; after some time, he agrees, stating “that he would take $1200 for mother and boy” (49). Because she still must support the entire Garland family, however, Keckley is unable to raise any money. Although Keckley does not suggest Garland purposefully offers her freedom for an amount he knows she will not be able to obtain, it is possible and even likely that this is the case, especially due to her position as the family’s main breadwinner; it seems unlikely Garland would be motivated to grant Keckley freedom while he did not have other means to support his family. Keckley’s exclusion of this accusation could be because she believes him to be a good man; however, it is also possible that she does not want to paint Garland in a negative light so that she may appear adequately thankful to her white readers, who, at the time, would expect a newly freed Black woman to be thankful to her white enslaver’s supposedly gracious offer.

Luckily for Keckley’s freedom, Mr. Garland died shortly thereafter. She explains that “Mr. Burwell[…] came to St. Louis to settle up the estate. He was a kind-hearted man, and said I should be free” (50). Keckley links being “kind-hearted” to granting freedom – a pointed remark for a white readership that might consider themselves “kind-hearted” while still perpetuating the cruelty of enslavement. Still, she maintains a dutiful graciousness in her prose to balance the expectations of that same audience. In light of Burwell’s promise, Keckley plans a trip to New York to raise the money for her freedom, but first she must get six white folks’ signatures as a sign of trust that she will return. The sixth man consents to provide his signature but informs Keckley he does not believe she will return. Demonstrating what she believes to be good character, Keckley reports, “I could not accept the signature of this man when he had no faith in my pledges. No; slavery, eternal slavery rather than be regarded with distrust by those whose respect I esteemed” (52-53). In addition to maintaining her character, Keckley aims to gain her freedom correctly and legally. As Lewis explains, “Keckley demands[…]the economic sanction of her freedom, the confirmation that it can never be revoked once the price is paid” (9). Although she does not go to New York because she cannot obtain a sixth signature, her work towards her own freedom eventually pays off; after years of navigating the legal and economic systems put in place to prevent it, Keckley was at last able to purchase her own and her son’s freedom at the age of thirty-one using a loan from some of her friends/clients in St. Louis, led by a woman named Mrs. Le Bourgois (Keckley 50, Santamarina 516).

After Mrs. Le Bourgois and other women friends of Keckley’s loaned her twelve hundred dollars to purchase her freedom, Keckley worked in St. Louis, making enough dresses to pay back the loan. During the same time, she married Mr. Keckley and soon divorced because “he persisted in dissipation;” she writes further, “although I was willing to work for him, I was not willing to share in his degradation” (64). After separating from her husband, Keckley moved to the North, stopping in Baltimore before landing in Washington D.C. (65).

D.C. is an important site for understanding Keckley’s life, history, and what prompted her to writeBehind the Scenes. Although Keckley began her work as a dressmaker in St. Louis, it was in D.C. that she started making dresses for elite white women like Varina Davis and Mary Todd Lincoln. As Santamarina makes clear, “Keckley’s value as a dressmaker increases with her ability to make clothing that mediates her clients’ class values, including those of feminine propriety, economic standing, and racial privilege” (525). In fact, Keckley obtained employment with Varina Davis, the wife of the soon-to-be president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, because of her well-known ability to create dresses that demonstrate these white women’s “class values.” Mrs. Captain Hetsill, “one of [Keckley’s] patrons and [Varina’s] intimate friend,” recommended Keckley to Varina based on Mrs. Hetsill’s own knowledge of Keckley’s dressmaking expertise (66).

While working for the Davises, Keckley recounts open discussions with Varina about the potential of civil war, in some of which Mrs. Davis expresses her devotion to the South, putting Keckley, a previously enslaved woman, in an odd position to say the least (72). Still, Keckley’s narrative offers few opinions other than positive ones about the Davis family. On Jefferson Davis she writes, “he always appeared to me as a thoughtful, considerate man in the domestic circle” (69). While Keckley does consider joining the family in Richmond, it is possible she only does so because Varina lies to her, saying, “Besides, when the war breaks out, the colored people will suffer in the North. The Northern people will look upon them as the cause of the War, and I fear, in their exasperation, will be inclined to treat you harshly” (71). In spite of Varina’s attempts to scare Keckley into joining them in the South, Keckley ultimately chose to stay in the North. About this decision she writes, “A show of war from the South, I felt, would lead to actual war in the North; and with the two sections bitterly arrayed against each other, I preferred to cast my lot among the people of the North” (72). While we can speculate that Keckley’s race and her experience with enslavement affected her decision to stay in the North, she neither says this outright nor does she denigrate the Davises for their association with the Confederacy. To Keckley, perhaps, the Davises are normal folks who have different opinions than her own, particularly because they treat her as a friend. It is perhaps more important to note here also that Keckley, as a newly-free Black woman in the time just before the Civil War, would likely not have the choice of working for abolitionists over future members of the Confederacy; she works for whomever can pay her so she can support herself and her son.

In addition to understanding how Keckley interacts with white folks who are politically opposed to her freedom, we can connect Keckley to the New Orleans World’s Fair through her work for the Davises. Keckley recounts seeing a dress she made for Varina in the 1860s at the Chicago Exposition in 1893. Although the dress was not attributed to Keckley in Chicago, she uses Behind the Scenes to recover it as her own creation. In addition to the fact that this dress was exhibited at a world’s fair, the dresses she makes for Varina, as we have noted, served a second purpose as advertisements for Keckley to gain more clients and friends. It is through the Davises that Keckley meets and starts making dresses for Robert E. Lee’s wife. Keckley’s use of social connections reflects the social value and integration into the U.S. economy that exhibiting at the Fair could have afforded Black Americans in 1884. Effectively, rather than using a fair to “[convert] her social credit […]into real money,” Keckley uses her relationships with elite white women (Lewis 10).

Although Keckley does not report these clients as having treated her poorly–nor does she necessarily believe them to be her good friends by the time she writes the memoir–the Lees and the Davises, eventually members of the Confederacy, may have been kind to Keckley for two reasons. First, she provided them with a service that was indispensable to elite families; second, Keckley herself was light-skinned because her father was white. While this does not mean Keckley did not face racial discrimination – it is obvious that she did – the whites for whom she worked while free may have treated her more kindly than someone with darker skin. Another example that could support this theory comes from when Keckley visited the Garlands after she had been free for some time, and a Black man, still enslaved by the family, says, “‘I declar, I nebber did see people carry on so. Wonder if I should go off and stay two or three years, if all ob you wud hug and kiss me so when I cum back?’” (252). Keckley’s reason for including this moment is unclear. Is it to demonstrate her own value in comparison to someone who is enslaved? Is that value based on her lighter skin color, her long service to the family, or her kindness to them? We do not mean to take away from Keckley’s character by suggesting that these white folks’ amiability towards her is based on her visible proximity to whiteness. Still, it is likely that those who we know to have been vehemently racist–Hugh Garland, one of her masters, was the lawyer who argued against the citizenship claims of Hugh and Harriet Scott in the Dred Scott case, Scott v. Sanford in 1857–would be more inclined to treat a woman with lighter skin better than an enslaved person with darker skin, who they likely see as their property rather than a friend.

Prior to Keckley’s visit south, she had begun working for Mary Todd Lincoln after Robert E. Lee’s wife wore a dress made by Keckley to an event. Her dress, Keckley writes, “attracted great attention at the dinner-party, and … proved a good card for me. I received numerous orders, and was relieved from all pecuniary embarrassments” (78). Keckley gained several clients as well as a good sum of money to support herself through the social connections of her clients. When Mary Todd “upset a cup of coffee on the dress she designed wearing … after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States,” she asks one of Keckley’s clients, Mrs. McClean, who had made her dress (80). As result, Keckley was offered the chance to construct a dress for Mary Todd. This example demonstrates how Keckley’s social connections directly supported her business, as well as how Keckley becomes such a close confidante of Mary Todd’s.

While working for the Lincolns during the Civil War, Keckley observed many Black people’s arrival in the North and their reactions to it. Similar to Harriet Jacobs, who discusses the racism ever-present in the North, Keckley recounts, “Many good friends reached forth kind hands, but the North is not warm and impulsive. For one kind word spoken, two harsh ones were uttered; there was something repelling in the atmosphere, and the bright joyous dreams of freedom to the slave faded–were sadly altered, in the presence of that stern, practical mother, reality” (111-112).

Upon their arrival in the North, newly-freed Black people would soon be confronted by the reality of a freedom in which racism was rife, and the resulting reality that both kindness and job opportunities were scarce. Keckley was well-acquainted with this reality, even while she had a steady income from her dressmaking business. Also at this time, Keckley witnessed a festival thrown by white folks for “the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers in the city” (113). She writes, “This suggested an idea to me. If the white people can give festivals to raise funds for the relief of suffering soldiers, why should not the well-to-do colored people go to work to do something for the benefit of the suffering blacks?” (113). Keckley’s own economic position, as well as her social standing and association with other Black folks like Frederick Douglass, enabled her to assist in the establishment of the Contraband Relief Association, of which Keckley becam

In addition to her aforementioned activist work, throughout her time making dresses for the Lincolns, Keckley demonstrates how she and Mary Todd grew closer as friends, as well as how Mary Todd came to depend on her. For example, while the Lincoln’s son, Willie, lay dying, Keckley kept watch over him. Although she was not in the room when he died, she was “immediately sent for” upon Willie’s passing (103). Keckley explains, “I assisted in washing him and dressing him, and then laid him on the bed;” in other words, Keckley helps get his body ready for his parents to see and his burial–not necessarily a job meant for the dressmaker (103). The episode effectively depicts how close she had grown to the Lincolns and how much they depended upon her.

In the section of her book focusing on Lincoln’s second presidency, Keckley recounts the fall of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, followed by Mary Todd inviting her to join them on a river steamboat to visit the fallen Southern cities. Upon visiting Richmond, Keckley relates, “I picked up a number of papers, and, by curious coincidence, the resolution prohibiting all free colored people from entering the State of Virginia. In the Senate chamber I sat in the chair that Jefferson Davis sometimes occupied; also in the chair of the Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens” (166). Returning while free to Virginia, where she was born into enslavement, and accidentally picking up the resolution which prohibited free Black folks from entering Virginia must have been quite an emotional moment for Keckley, and one that also reinforced the stakes of the Union victory: the beginning to freedom for all Black Americans. To punctuate this victory, Keckley sits in the ex-President’s–and her ex-client’s–chair, a free Black woman who they would not permit to enter Virginia now resting on a Confederate’s throne; the same went for the chair of the Vice President. Through her work and relationship with the Lincolns, Keckley is one of few Black Americans who was able to see results of the Civil War almost immediately– her ability to travel around in the South being just one example of this.

A few days after their return, Keckley relates her experience of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Like when her son Willie died, Mary Todd asks for Keckley, and only Keckley, to comfort her in her grief. Their relationship is indeed one of friendship; however, it is also one in which Mary Todd depends much more heavily on Keckley than Keckley does on Mary Todd. This is likely because Mary Todd sees their friendship as one of service, and one which should remain private due to their racial and class differences. After Lincoln’s assassination, Mary Todd begs Keckley to join her in Chicago when they are forced to move out of the White House. “Finding no excuse would be accepted,” Keckley writes, “I made preparations to go to Chicago with Mrs. Lincoln” (210). In her time with Mary Todd and her sons, Keckley watched Mary Todd homeschool her son Tad. When Mary Todd asks Tad what “A-P-E” spells, Tad confuses the word for monkey, which causes Keckley to reflect on his racial privilege. She writes, “Whenever I think of this incident I am tempted to laugh; and then it occurs to me that had Tad been a negro boy, not the son of a President, and so difficult to instruct, he would have been called thick-skulled, and would have been held up as an example of the inferiority of the race” (219). Keckley criticizes white Americans’ essentializing notions about Black Americans by exhibiting Tad’s mistake. She concludes, “If a colored boy appears dull, so does a white boy sometimes; and if a whole race is judged by a single example of apparent dullness, another race should be judged by a similar example” (220). By applying the racist idea that one person’s actions can be attributed to an entire race of people to a white boy, Keckley effectively questions the validity of racism against Black folks. In spite of this, the media attention as well as contemporary scholars’ attention to her relationship with Mary Todd often elides Keckley’s considerations of race as a tool of white supremacy. As such, particularly at the time Behind the Scenes was published, those who supported enslavement and segregation chose to ignore Keckley’s challenges against the racist system in favor of treating the memoir as gossip about the First Lady and her family.

While scholars often focus on Mary Todd only when examining the “Old Clothes Scandal,” we would like to focus on the clear racial differences between Mary Todd and Keckley as demonstrated instead by their time in the St. Denis Hotel in New York. After Mary Todd had been in Chicago for some years, she contacted Keckley to assist her in selling her old wardrobe. When Keckley joined Mary Todd at the St. Denis Hotel in New York, the concierge insisted there was no room on the fourth floor or below for Keckley – with the unspoken words, we speculate, “because she is a Black woman.” Mary Todd demanded he find room for Keckley, and eventually, he offered them adjoining rooms on the fifth floor. While Keckley was well-aware of the treatment she received from the concierge, describing him in her narrative as “exquisitely arrayed, highly perfumed, and too self-important to be obliging, or even courteous,” Mary Todd rants about her surprise at the poor treatment: “‘How provoking!’ Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed… ‘I declare, I never saw such unaccommodating people. Just to think of them sticking us away up here in the attic. I will give them a regular going over in the morning’” (275, 276). Because Mrs. Lincoln is disguised as Mrs. Clarke for her stay at the hotel, Keckley reminds her that Mrs. Clarke would be treated differently than Mrs. Lincoln, without asserting the concierge’s inconsiderate comments were directed at herself rather than Mary Todd. Effectively, Mary Todd’s disguise as Mrs. Clarke does not make it harder for Mary Todd to get a room, but rather for Keckley to get a room, since Keckley is Black and “Mrs. Clarke” does not have the same social power as Mary Todd does as a Lincoln.

Shortly after this incident, Mary Todd implored Keckley to eat dinner at the table downstairs. Keckley recounts, “I was giving my order, when the steward came forward and gruffly said: ‘You are in the wrong room,’” before leading her out of the room, saying, “’Are you not Mrs. Clarke’s servant?’” (279-280). Although Keckley responds she is with Mrs. Clarke rather than her servant, the steward replies, “’It is all the same; servants are not allowed to eat in the large dining-room…you must take your dinner in the servants’ hall” (280). However, the servants’ hall was locked, the key was gone, and Keckley went hungry. She writes, “When I reached Mrs. Lincoln’s rooms, tears of humiliation and vexation were in my eyes” (281). Although Mary Todd insisted on going to get Keckley dinner, Keckley advised her against it because it would cause suspicion and likely blow her cover as Mrs. Clarke. Keckley writes, “She was so frank and impulsive that she never once thought that her actions might be misconstrued. It did not occur to her that she might order dinner to be served in my room, so I went to bed without a mouthful to eat” (283-284). This situation demonstrates Mary Todd’s privilege, which she cannot see past to understand the position in which she has put both herself and Keckley, or how to solve this issue considerately. Mary Todd’s lack of awareness about the different treatment Keckley receives implies that Mary Todd did not consider the racism Keckley has to face as a Black woman, a privilege available to her due to her position as elite and white.

We conclude with an analysis of the narrative’s penultimate chapter “Old Friends,” which includes Keckley’s trip to visit the Garlands, the last family who enslaved her. Keckley tells us that when she mentions the Garlands and their kindness to her Northern friends they “would roll up their eyes in surprise,” asking, “‘Why, Lizzie, how can you have a kind thought for those who inflicted a terrible wrong upon you by keeping you in bondage?’” (241). Keckley explains that she was not only a victim while enslaved – that she, like freed people, had good memories of growing up:

“You forget the past is dear to every one, for to the
past belongs the golden period, the days of childhood…To surrender it is to surrender the greatest
part of my existence—early impressions, friends, and the graces of my father, my mother, and
my son. [The Garlands] are associated with everything that memory holds dear” (241-242).

Keckley’s friends, however, do not understand no matter how she explains it to them. Rather than an endorsement of enslavement, or her masters for owning slaves, Keckley feels warmly towards her old masters because they were a part of her childhood, and had proven to be kind to her latein life. Certainly, the Garlands were excited when Keckley visited, receiving her as an old friend; however, there was still the strange dichotomy of their friendly visit in juxtaposition with the setting of Rude’s Hill, the previous headquarters of General Stonewall Jackson, a leading member of the Confederacy. Like her sitting in the President and Vice-President of the Confederacy’s chairs represents Keckley’s survival through the institution of enslavement and Civil War, so does her sitting with her old slave masters as friends in the previous meeting place of General Stonewall Jackson. She, a Black woman, against dominant ideas of the era, takes up space in places originally used to deny her full subjecthood.

While Behind the Scenes has been focused on for its exposé-natured narrative about Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Keckley’s narrative, her rhetorical choices, and the ideas about race that she chooses to insert throughout the memoir should be considered more fully. This Author Page has attempted to examine Keckley as a Black woman who uses her agency to gain her freedom, challenge dominant racist ideologies and practices, and reclaim her own narrative about life as both an enslaved and freed Black woman before, during, and after the Civil War. Finally, it is our hope that this Author Page enables readers to imagine Keckley as an exhibitor of her writing and her dresses at the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884, as she ought to have been.

Works Cited

Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes. New York, NY, G.W. Carlton & Co., 1868.

Lewis, Janaka B. “Elizabeth Keckley and Freedom’s Labor.” African American Review,
vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 5–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26553974.

Santamarina, Xiomara. “Behind the Scenes of Black Labor: Elizabeth Keckley and the
Scandal of Publicity.” Feminist Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 2002, pp. 515–537.
JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3178784.

Sorisio, Carolyn. “Unmasking the Genteel Performer: Elizabeth Keckley’s behind the
Scenes and the Politics of Public Wrath.” African American Review, vol. 34, no. 1,
2000, pp. 19–38. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2901182.