GBN Daily Drop Podcast: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley – Dressmaker, Author and Confidante to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln (LISTEN)

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast, on Lincoln’s birthday, is based on the Saturday, February 12 entry in the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022. It’s about the amazing Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, an enslaved woman owned by her own father who managed to buy her freedom and become dressmaker and confidante to first lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

(Btw, GBN’s Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 is 50% off at workman.com with code:50CAL until 2/28/22!)

You can also follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Saturday, February 12th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing. Today, on Lincoln’s birthday, we are honoring 19^th century dressmaker and designer Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley.

Against all odds, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley had perseverance, talent and style. Owned by her own father, Keckley was born enslaved in 1818. Despite being treated brutally, she eventually became an accomplished seamstress, and in 1855 Keckley had earned enough money to purchase her and her son’s freedom.

She then built a dressmaking business and became dresser and confidante to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. In 1863 she founded a relief association for newly freed Blacks. Keckley published her autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, in 1868.

To learn more about Keckley, you can read her autobiography, which is in the public domain and online at the internet archive, check out The Elizabeth Keckley Reader, Volumes 1 & 2, which are two collections of essays and other published works about Keckley, check out the dresses she designed online, including the one for Mary Todd Lincoln that resides at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, and watch her short biography on YouTube produced by the Smithsonian Channel.

Keckley, played by Gloria Reuben, is also a featured character in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln. Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes.

• https://www.whitehousehistory.org/from-slavery-to-the-white-house-the-extraordinary-life-of-elizabeth-keckly
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/obituaries/elizabeth-keckly-overlooked.html

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing, and available at workman.com, Amazon, Bookshop and other online retailers.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

For more Good Black News, check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.