Thread by @TheCivilWarDoc1

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..."

"...me remember the incident so well. This was the first time I was punished in this cruel way, but not the last." She was also separated from her adopted father, an enslaved man named George Hobbs when she was only seven. The family was given only 2 hours to say goodbye.

Keckley wrote about her family separation vividly, stating that "I can remember the scene as if it were but yesterday;--how my father cried out against the cruel separation; his last kiss; his wild straining of my mother to his bosom; the solemn prayer to Heaven; the tears..."

"...and sobs--the fearful anguish of broken hearts. The last kiss, the last good-by; and he, my father, was gone, gone forever." They never saw each other again but did write one another.

Keckley was sent to North Carolina to live with her enslaver's son. She was repeatedly beaten and subject to years of sexual violence there, which resulted in the birth of her only child whom she named George.

Kackley was sent back to Virginia and 1842 and traveled with her enslaver's family to St. Louis in 1847 where she was hired out as a seamstress. She became well known throughout the city for her dressmaking skills.

She married James Keckly in 1850 and her enslaver agreed that she could purchase her and her son George's freedom for $1,200 dollars. Elizabeth and James lived together for eight years, during which time she found out he was not legally free, but a fugitive enslaved person.

Her writings indicate their marriage was an unhappy one. It took Elizabeth Keckley three years to raise the funds to purchase freedom for her and her son. She separated from her husband soon after and began working as a seamstress in St. Louis and made quite the name for herself.

Keckley moved to Washington D.C. in 1860 and started her own fashion business, making dresses for the wives of the political elite. One of her clients was Varina Davis, who later became the First Lady of the Confederacy.

Keckley was recommended by a customer to make dresses for incoming First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and was chosen for the position as her dressmaker the day after President Lincoln's inauguration. The two women developed a close relationship.

Keckley's son George joined the Union Army and was killed in action at Wilson's Creek, Missouri in 1861. After his death she became heavily involved in the Contraband Relief Association.

Keckley published a memoir in 1868 titled, "Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House." She faced severe backlash because the book contained private correspondence with Mary Lincoln and other elite white women.

She became the head of Wilberforce University's Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts in 1892. She eventually moved back to Washington D.C. and passed away in May of 1907.

#TheCivilWarDoc #MetGala #MetGala2022 #ElizabethKeckley #FashionHistory #CivilWarHistory #History

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We should also note that the dress @SJP wore was designed by a Black designer named Christopher John Rogers @cjrtheperson. Website: christopherjohnrogers.com

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