Elizabeth Keckly gained a measure of fame in her own lifetime as an African American seamstress and owner of a successful dressmaking establishment in Washington, D.C., as the modiste and confidante of first lady Mary Lincoln, as a founder of the Contraband Relief Association, and as the author of Behind the Scenes. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868). If you’ve read George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, set at Oak Hill, you’ve read excerpts from Behind the Scenes. Now learn more about Elizabeth Keckly, and how her own death was not the end of the story. When Keckly died in 1907, the tombstone at her grave at Harmony Cemetery should have permanently marked her final resting place, but Elizabeth Keckly’s grave came to mirror its occupant’s place in history. Based on her essay in the book Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves, Michelle A. Krowl will discuss the life and afterlife of Elizabeth Keckly, and the recent reclamation of both Keckly’s name and gravesite. Michelle A. Krowl is the Civil War and Reconstruction specialist in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. Event is Free but seating is limited, so please register to attend HERE
