Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery in Virginia in 1818 and endured forced labour, physical abuse and sexual assault before establishing herself as an exceptionally skilled seamstress. After being taken to Missouri, she used dressmaking to support the household that enslaved her and eventually negotiated the purchase of freedom for herself and her son in 1855. Keckley moved to Washington, D.C., where her talent and business ability won an elite clientele that included the wives of leading politicians.

Keckley became Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker and close confidante during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, giving her unusual access to the private strains of the Civil War White House. She also helped found the Contraband Relief Association to assist formerly enslaved people arriving in Washington. Her 1868 memoir, Behind the Scenes, defended both her own life and Mary Lincoln but caused a public rupture because private letters were included in the publication. Keckley later taught sewing at Wilberforce University and died in Washington in 1907.

Ann Rinaldi’s An Unlikely Friendship gives Elizabeth Keckley a parallel life story with Mary Todd Lincoln rather than introducing her only after she reaches the White House. The novel follows Keckley from enslavement and abuse through the purchase of her freedom and her success as a dressmaker, before her work brings her into Mary’s confidence during the Civil War. Their friendship is presented as genuine but unequal, shaped at every stage by the racial and social structures that gave the two women radically different forms of vulnerability.