She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.The story of how Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan,broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.A prolific author, Keller was well traveled and was outspoken in her opposition to war.
She campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.Helen Adams Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, a cousin of Robert E. Lee and daughter of Charles W. Adams, a former Confederate general.The Keller family originates from Germany.
Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was nineteen months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain," which could possibly have been scarlet fever or meningitis.The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time, her only communication partner was Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who was able to create a sign language with her; by the age of seven, she had over sixty home signs to communicate with her family.According to Soviet blind-deaf psychologist A. Meshcheryakov, Martha's friendship and teaching was crucial for Helen's later developments.
alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350032730090133074" />Starting in May, 1888, Keller attended the Perkins Institute for the Blind.
In 1894, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf.In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College.Her admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for her education.In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Political activities
Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author.She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes. She was a suffragist, a pacifist, a Wilson opposer, a radical Socialist, and a birth control supporter.In 1915, Helen Keller and George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).Keller and Sullivan traveled to over 39 countries, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every US President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin, and Mark Twain.Keller was a member of the Socialist Party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working classes from 1909 to 1921. She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency.
Writings
One of Keller's earliest pieces of writing, at the age of eleven, was The Frost King (1891).There were allegations that this story had been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby.At the age of 22, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), with help from Sullivan and Sullivan's husband, John Macy.It includes words that Keller wrote and the story of her life up to age 21, and was written during her time in college.Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908 giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world.Out of the Dark, a series of essays on Socialism, was published in 1913.Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion, was published in 1927 and re-issued as Light in my Darkness.It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the controversial mystic who gives a spiritual interpretation of the Last Judgment and second coming of Jesus Christ, and the movement named after him, Swedenborgianism.
Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles.
Later life
Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Helen Keller the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' highest two civilian honors.In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968 at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.
Posthumous honors
In 1999, Keller was listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.In 2003, Alabama honored its native daughter on its state quarter.The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama is dedicated to her.There is a street named after Helen Keller in Getafe, Spain.
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