The Historic Hillsborough Commission has adopted The Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School as the new working, public-facing name for the historic site at 319 N. Churton St. in Hillsborough.
The new name reflects an evolution already underway at the site: telling more fully the intertwined histories of the Burwell School, women’s education, enslavement and freedom, and Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly, the nationally significant author, activist, and dressmaker who was enslaved in the Burwell household as a young woman.
The Burwell School remains the historic place. Its buildings, grounds, academy history, and nearly two centuries of stories remain central to the site’s identity and interpretation. The Elizabeth Keckly Center gives Keckly’s story a named home within that historic place…