Black Actress Spotlight: Gloria Reuben In Lincoln
In the film Lincoln, Gloria Reuben plays a former slave Elizabeth Keckley. A real former slave who bought her freedom for $1,200.
Elizabeth Keckley
According to Elizabeth Keckley’s Wikipedia page, she she became a close confidant of the President’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.
After Keckley bought the freedom of herself and her son, she started a business based on clients who were wives of government elites. This included the wives of Jefferson Davis and the wife of Robert E. Lee.
Wouldn’t we like to see a movie about this woman? Unfortunately she has relatively small part in the film.
To learn more you can read the autobiography Keckley wrote Behind the Scenes Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868).
Watch Gloria Reuben talk about her character in Lincoln below:
