Behind the scenes: Thirty years a slave, and four years in the white house - Softcover

"My life has been an eventful one. I was born a slave—was the child of slave parents—therefore I came upon the earth free in God-like thought, but fettered in action. My birthplace was Dinwiddie Court-House, in Virginia. My recollections of childhood are distinct, perhaps for the reason that many stirring incidents are associated with that period. I am now on the shady side of forty, and as I sit alone in my room the brain is busy, and a rapidly moving panorama brings scene after scene before me, some pleasant and others sad; and when I thus greet old familiar faces, I often find myself wondering if I am not living the past over again. The visions are so terribly distinct that I almost imagine them to be real. Hour after hour I sit while the scenes are being shifted; and as I gaze upon the panorama of the past, I realize how crowded with incidents my life has been. Every day seems like a romance within itself, and the years grow into ponderous volumes." Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born into slavery in February 1818 in Dinwiddie, Virginia. Her parents were listed as George Pleasant and Agnes Hobbs, but Pleasant, who belonged to another family, paid infrequent visits; Keckley later reported her mother's deathbed confession that her master, Colonel Armistead Burwell, was her real father. "Lizzie" was passed to the ownership of Colonel Barnwell's son, Robert. She was impregnated against her will by a white man, and after giving birth in 1839 to her son, George, she moved with Robert Barnwell's sister to St. Louis. There, she married James Keckley, but the union was short lived. By then, she had learned the dressmaking trade and exhibited considerable flair in her creations. Loans from her wealthy dressmaking clientele enabled Keckley to purchase her freedom for $1,200 in November 1855.