Live Program At Library For Black History Month

Elizabeth Keckly is a name not often heard, but she played an important role throughout the Civil War in The White House of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.

Newtown Historical Society and C.H. Booth Library will jointly sponsor a re-enactment of her life on Monday, February 9, in the library’s lower community room, 25 Main Street (route 25) in the center of Newtown. The presentation, entitled “They Called Me Lizzy... From Slavery to the White House,” will begin at 7 pm (note early start time for this historical society program).

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly was born into slavery in Dinwiddie Courthouse, Virginia, 1818, but eventually managed to purchase her freedom. She made her way to Washington, D.C., where her dressmaking skills and entrepreneurial savvy brought her to the attention of many political families.

When the Lincolns moved into the White House, Mary Lincoln hired Keckly as her dressmaker and stylist, launching a relationship beyond anything Lizzy might have envisioned for herself. She became Mrs Lincoln’s confidante, and was close to the entire family; she was present with the President and Mrs Lincoln during some of their most private and difficult moments.

Not restricted to her household duties, she was a founder of the Contraband Relief Society to aid newly freed backs streaming into the Capitol, as well as the Home for Destitute Colored Women and Girls. Her son George passed for white in order to enlist in the Union army before the start of black recruitment, and died early in the war.

While Lizzy’s White House years may be the most exciting period of her story, her life before and after her connection to the Lincolns is equally compelling. Following the war, Keckly wrote her memoirs, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Unfortunately, Mrs Lincoln considered it a betrayal of their intimate trust and severed relations with Lizzy.

Keckly eventually became head of the Department of Domestic Arts and Sciences at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio, until she suffered a slight stroke in the 1890s and returned to Washington to end her days in the Destitute Women’s Home she had helped to found. Much more than a slave narrative, however, Lizzy’s life is a human story, tragic and triumphant, and always fascinating.

The performance, written by Kandie Kathleen Carle and produced by East Haddam Stage Company, is the result of four years of research and writing. It has been in performance for over a year, and has played to excellent reviews.

The one-woman performance in Newtown will be by Tammy Denease Richardson, and will last about an hour.

Newtown Historical Society programs are free and open to the public, but seating is limited and the library requests registration. Refreshments will be served following the presentation.

For further information call the historical society at 426-5937 or the library, 426-4533.