Elizabeth Keckley, Thirty Years a Slave, Four Years in the White House
By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Published March 4, 2021
Elizabeth Keckley (Courtesy Photo)
A Black woman’s memoir published 153 years ago still tops Amazon’s books sales chart.
The historical work was perhaps the bluntest and most controversial of its era. Keckley detailed her life as a slave who purchased her freedom and then worked in the White House for two U.S. first ladies – Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of President Abraham Lincoln, and Varina Davis, the wife of President Jefferson Davis.
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A seamstress to both Davis and Lincoln, Keckley practically lived in the White House during the Civil War.