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Last night at the Met Gala, Sarah Jessica Parker wore a dress designed in homage to Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. Keckley was the first Black female fashion designer to work in the White House. She was First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker. Here is a thread about her life. 
Keckley was born an enslaved woman in Dinwiddie County, Virginia in February of 1818. As a child she worked with her mother as a house servant for Colonel Armistead Burwell and took care of his infant child. Burwell was also Keckley's biological father.
Keckley was routinely subject to severe physical punishment under the orders of Burwell's wife. Keckley remembered the first time she was whipped and wrote, "The blows were not administered with a light hand, I assure you, and doubtless the severity of the lashing has made..."
