River Campus to celebrate Black History Month with storyteller Marlene B. Rivero on Tuesday

Storyteller Marlene B. Rivero of Grand Chain, Illinois, said she’s eager for people to learn “little nuggets” about history during her living-history presentation and portrayal of freed slave Elizabeth Keckley on Tuesday at the River Campus in Cape Girardeau.

This event is part of the Crisp Museum’s celebration of Black History Month — and it’s not the first time Rivero has been asked to host an event at Southeast Missouri State University.

“I did present Harriet Tubman, and [the River Campus] asked me if I would come and present Elizabeth Keckley,” she said by phone Thursday.

Keckley was a seamstress and friend of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife to President Abraham Lincoln. She was in the White House from 1861 until the president was assassinated in 1867, Rivero said.

Rivero described the event Tuesday as a re-enactment, as she will be dressed as Keckley, who was the next to the last person Mary Todd Lincoln interviewed for the job.

“The character talks about her life from slavery up to the period in the White House,” Rivero said. “Afterwards, I will open the floor for question and answer.”

And what secured the job, Rivero said, was the bodice part of the dress, crafted by Keckley.

“She basically was the African-American person in the White House that gained attention because of her book, ‘Behind the Seams,’” Rivero said. “She wrote this autobiography telling about her own life, as well as her time as a seamstress and what she heard behind closed doors, and the controversy the book brought.”

Rivero stressed the importance of the event because she said it lets people know “black people knew Lincoln.”

“They loved Lincoln,” she said. “Many of them do in that period. He had adversities himself as he was coming up. ... He was the peoples’ president. And I believe, by reading Elizabeth’s account of him, she loved him, too.”

Rivero began her storytelling career shortly after a spur-of-the-moment, 10-minute skit of Harriet Tubman at an amateur night around 1998.

“I got a standing ovation,” she said. “People just loved it and invited me to come back the next week. The people loved what they saw and I love sharing it.”

Rivero said she has been blessed with the “fluke” opportunity to travel and share her love of storytelling.

“It just happened,” she said. “There was no certain plan that I can lay my finger on.”

The Historic Tuesday Talk series takes place at 7 p.m. on select Tuesdays in the Crisp Museum at the River Campus through April 16. They are free and open to the public. The events consist of short, informational presentations and discussion sessions. Topics include movements, Civil War, World War I, riverboats, railroads, socio-cultural issues, space exploration, regional history, natural resources, fossils and geology, according to a news release.

For more information, email museum@semo.edu or call (573) 651-2260.

jhartwig@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3632