Wrongs Inflicted and Liberties Deprived: Elizabeth Keckley and the Geographies of Enslavement.

This chapter considers the narrative of the formerly enslaved Elizabeth Keckley, who, when gaining the freedom for herself and her son, George, in Nov 1855, relocated to Washington D.C., and became the personal dressmaker for First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. The relationship between the two women has become the focus of much of the existing scholarship. However, moving away from this, the analysis presented here centres on Elizabeth's life during her years of slavery. It maps the physical geographies of enslavement she experienced in varying locations – including Virginia, North Carolina and Missouri - and the emotional control and psychic traumas she suffered in these places. It will employ Stephanie Camp’s concept of the “geographies of containment” where enslavers “presided over controlled and controlling landscapes” restricting the movement of enslaved people “in both time and space,” to consider her experiences of enslavement. Of course, Keckley experienced slavery in both urban and rural locations, with different enslavers. This analysis will consider then how her respective enslavers employed such containment to control and confine her.
However, the chapter will also consider the ways in which Keckley was also able to carve out what Camp terms as a “rival geography”, where enslaved people adopted “alternative ways of knowing and using…space that conflicted with [enslavers] ideals and demands.” It will explore how Keckley employed competing epistemologies to that of her enslaver and used spaces of labor for her own ends. In the process, she acquired space and time to resist her enslavers’ ideals and a means to work for her literal freedom. Applying Daina Ramey Berry’s concept of enslaved people’s use of “soul values” to survive the traumas of enslavement, this chapter will also consider how Keckley drew upon her inner-strength and ideas of self-worth as a form of resistance and resilience to both the physical and psychical impacts of enslavement. The places and spaces she used as forms of rival geographies were intrinsic to the mental and emotional resilience she developed during her enslavement. They ultimately ensured that when she purchased freedom for both her and her son she was best placed to navigate the boundaries she faced in a city which clearly marked the unfreedoms of working class Black women like herself.