The Big Read/Attleboro's 1 ABC and the MLK Committee present: They Called Me Lizzy...From Slavery to the White House

This one-woman play, produced by the East Haddam Stage Company in Connecticut, tells the true-life story of Elizabeth Keckley and her rise from slavery to entrepreneurial freedom, then scandal and decline. Actress Stephanie Jackson becomes Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, and author of “Behind the Scenes: 30 Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.” 

While Keckley is best known for her talents as Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker and “stylist,” and was often in the room with President and Mrs. Lincoln during some of their most private and difficult moments, the story before and beyond her connection to the White House is equally compelling.  Performed in retrospect, this dramatic recounting of Lizzy’s experience is more than a slave narrative, it is a human story, at times tragic and at times triumphant.