Behind the Seams: The 'Colored Historian' of the White House and Her Parodists

The African American author Elizabeth Keckly has garnered signiicant attention in recent decades as a result of renewed interest in her memoir and exposé of the family of Abraham Lincoln, Behind the Scenes; or, hirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868). Meanwhile, the anonymous author who, writing as “Betsey Kickley,” viciously parodied her book in Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman Who Took in Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis (1868) has remained an enigma. his essay identiies the mysterious author of Behind the Seams as Daniel Ottolengui, a Jewish newspaper correspondent and writer from Charleston, South Carolina. he parody was reprinted in 1945 by another pseudonymous author, identiied here as the Manhattan-based book dealer Charles P. Everitt. he contents and contexts of both editions of Behind the Seams illustrate the enduring inluence of Keckly's challenge to hegemonic narratives of American history.