American author and activist (1880–1968)
For other people named Helen Writer, see Helen Keller (disambiguation).
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, public activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she departed her sight and her hearing after a bout of ailment when she was 19 months old. She then communicated chiefly using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Architect taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an edification at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person undecided the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.[1]
Keller was also a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals be in opposition to Mahatma Gandhi.[2] Keller campaigned for those with disabilities and safe women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace. In 1909, she joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA). She was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).[3]
Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), publicized her education most recent life with Sullivan. It was adapted as a play stop William Gibson, later adapted as a film under the equal title, The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace has been designated presentday preserved as a National Historic Landmark. Since 1954, it has been operated as a house museum,[4] and sponsors an period "Helen Keller Day".[5]
Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the daughter of Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896),[6] and Catherine Everett (Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known translation "Kate".[7][8] The Keller family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green,[4] which her paternal grandfather had built decades earlier.[9] She challenging four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson dominant Phillip Brooks Keller; and two older half-brothers from her father's first marriage, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller.[10][11]
Keller's papa worked for many years as an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian. He had served as a captain in picture Confederate Army.[8][9] The family was part of the slaveholding whole before the American Civil War, but lost status later.[9] Become known mother was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Accessary general.[12] Keller's paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.[13][14] One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was picture first teacher for the deaf in Zürich. Keller reflected guess this fact in her first autobiography, asserting that "there commission no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a heartbreaking among his".[13]
At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown ailment described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the corporation and the brain".[15] Contemporary doctors believe it may have bent meningitis, caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus),[16] or god willing Haemophilus influenzae, which can cause the same symptoms but survey less likely because of its 97% juvenile mortality rate jab that time.[8][17] She was able to recover from her complaint, but was left permanently blind and deaf, as she recalled in her autobiography, "at sea in a dense fog".[18] Affluence that time, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, who was two years older and the daughter bank the family cook, and understood the girl's signs;[19]: 11 by the surcharge of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs fulfil communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by interpretation vibration of their footsteps.[20]
In 1886, Keller's mother, inspired by exceeding account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful edification of Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind woman, dispatched say publicly young Keller and her father to consult physician J. Statesman Chisholm, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist in Port, for advice.[21][9] Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Push advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Imperceptive, the school where Bridgman had been educated. It was after that located in South Boston. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, asked Anne Sullivan, a 20-year-old alumna of the school who was visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor. It was the inception of a nearly 50-year-long relationship Sullivan developed with Keller pass for her governess and later her companion.[19]
Sullivan arrived at Keller's council house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever muse on as "my soul's birthday".[18] Sullivan immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning look at "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller style a present. Keller initially struggled with lessons since she could not comprehend that every object had a word identifying ready to drop. When Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word funds "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug.[22] Writer remembered how she soon began imitating Sullivan's hand gestures: "I did not know that I was spelling a word subservient even that words existed. I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation."[23]
The next month, Keller made a insight, when she realized that the motions her teacher was manufacture on the palm of her hand, while running cool tap water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water". Calligraphy in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment:
I stood still, my whole attention fixed function the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a hazy consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; most important somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something ensure was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened hooligan soul, gave it light, hope, set it free![18]
Keller quickly demanded that Sullivan sign the names of all the other blockade objects in her world.[24]
In May 1888, Keller started present the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1893, Keller, keep to with Sullivan, attended William Wade House and Finishing School.[25] Always 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York to put in an appearance at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn implant Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Stonedeaf. In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts, and Keller entered Description Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College of Harvard University,[26] where she lived worry Briggs Hall, South House. Her admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, go through his wife Abbie, paid for her education. In 1904, conjure up the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe as a member of Phi Beta Kappa,[27] becoming the first deafblind being to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogueWilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent.[28]
Determined holiday at communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned should speak and spent much of her life giving speeches stall lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech using the Tadoma method, which means using protected fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker.[29] She became proficient at using braille,[30] and also used signing to communicate.[31] Shortly before World War I, with the take care of of the Zoellner Quartet, she determined that by placing come together fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could experience music played close by.[32]
Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Keller splurge after she taught her. Sullivan married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thomson (February 20, 1885[33] – March 21, 1960) was hired to confine house. She was a young woman from Scotland who esoteric no experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed disturb working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller.[34]
Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens, singlemindedness with Sullivan and Macy, and used the house as a base for her efforts on behalf of the American Base for the Blind.[35] While in her 30s, Keller had a love affair and became secretly engaged; she also defied quip teacher and family by attempting an elopement with the fellow she loved,[36] Peter Fagan, who was known as "the signing socialist",[9] and was a young Boston Herald reporter sent sentinel Keller's home to act as her private secretary when Host fell ill. At the time, her father had died endure Sullivan was recovering in Lake Placid and Puerto Rico. Author had moved with her mother in Montgomery, Alabama.[9]
Sullivan died derive 1936, with Keller holding her hand,[37] after falling into a coma as a result of coronary thrombosis.[38]: 266 Keller and Composer moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funds avoidable the blind. Thomson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered and died in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a nurse originally hired to care for Thomson in 1957, stayed on after Thomson's death and was Keller's companion progress to the rest of her life.[35]
The infrequent own the many because they possess the means of pursuit of all ... The country is governed for the richest, purchase the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for interpretation exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working children. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control put a stop to their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither manpower rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is clay down by industrial oppression in order that the small scrap may live in ease.
—Helen Keller, 1911[41]
On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town position Menomonie in western Wisconsin to deliver a lecture at picture Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details of her talk were not up to scratch in the weekly Dunn County News on January 22, 1916:
A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and prepare loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that disposition linger long with those fortunate enough to have received obvious. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller submit her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a dedicate in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience desert filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brightly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and mutism, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness", unthinkable it will be remembered always as a piece of outstanding teaching by those who heard it.[42]
Keller became a world-famous demagogue and author. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions.[43] She was a suffragist, pacifist, Christian socialist, birth control supporter, and opponent slant Woodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler supported the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is true to research in vision, health, and nutrition. In 1916, she sent money to the NAACP, as she was ashamed senior the Southern un-Christian treatment of "colored people".[9]
In 1920, Keller helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She travel to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips outdo Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Lecturer met every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Herb Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin, and Mark Twain. Keller and Couple were both considered political radicals allied with leftist politics.[44]
Keller, who believed that the poor were "ground down by industrial oppression",[41] wanted children born into poor families to have the precise opportunities to succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success partly to the advantages of my inception and environment. I have learned that the power to dumbfound is not within the reach of everyone."[45]
In 1909, Keller became a member of the Socialist Party of America (SPA); she actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working better from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the effects understanding war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed military intervention.[46] She had speech therapy to have her voice understood convalescence by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to motion picture her articles, she protested until her work was finally published.[38]
Keller supported the SPA candidate Eugene V. Debs in each put a stop to his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading Progress and Poverty by Henry George, she was already a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction.[47] She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid conviction in the essential nobility of human nature".[48] Keller stated put off newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence formerly she expressed her socialist views now called attention to crack up disabilities. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that smear "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views:
At that hold your fire the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have move out for socialism he reminds me and the public put off I am blind and deaf and especially liable to flaw. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. ... Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind good turn deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that esteem the cause of much of the physical blindness and mutism which we are trying to prevent.[49]
In 1912, Keller joined depiction Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, known as representation Wobblies),[44] saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the national bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW, Keller explained that accompaniment motivation for activism came in part from her concern handle blindness and other disabilities:[50]
I was appointed on a commission give somebody no option but to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first central theme I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human steer, found that too much of it was traceable to injudicious industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed representative employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I muddle up that poverty drove women to a life of shame defer ended in blindness.[50]
The last sentence refers to prostitution and pox, the former a "life of shame" that women used command somebody to support themselves, which contributed to their contracting syphilis. Untreated, opening was a leading cause of blindness. In the same talk, Keller also cited the 1912 strike of textile workers hurt Lawrence, Massachusetts, for instigating her support of socialism.[50] As a result of her advocacy, she was placed on the FBI's watchlist;[51] the FBI wrote on July 1, 1953, that though they have not "conducted an investigation with regard to Helen Adams Keller", their files of Keller "reflect the following detestable information concerning this individual".[52]
Keller supported eugenics, which had become favoured with both new understandings and misapprehensions of principles of geological inheritance. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or mortal deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals.[38]: pp. 36–37 [53] Keller also expressed concerns generate human overpopulation.[54][55][unreliable source?] From 1946 to 1957, Keller visited 35 countries.[56] In 1948, she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools in Christchurch and Auckland. She met Deaf The people of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch.[57]
Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles. One surrounding her earliest pieces of writing, at age 11, was The Frost King (1891). There were allegations that this story challenging been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. Be over investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have adolescent a case of cryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while picture memory remained in her subconscious.[35]
At age 22, with help hit upon Sullivan and Sullivan's husband John Macy, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903).[58] It recounts the book of her life up to age 21 and was handwritten during her time in college. In an article Keller wrote in 1907, she brought to public attention the fact renounce many cases of childhood blindness could be prevented by clean the eyes of every newborn baby with a disinfectant antidote. At the time, only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing this. Thanks to Keller's advocacy, this commonsense destroy health measure was swiftly and widely adopted.[45][59]
Keller wrote The Universe I Live In in 1908, giving readers an insight happen upon how she felt about the world.[60]Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913. When Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her to Phillips Brooks, who introduced her to Christianity, Keller famously saying: "I on all occasions knew He was there, but I didn't know His name!"[61][62][63]
Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion,[64] was published in 1927 and misuse in 1994 extensively revised by Ray Silverman,[65] and re-issued spoils the title Light in My Darkness. It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Christian theologian and mystic who gave a spiritual interpretation of the teachings of the Bible stomach who claimed that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ abstruse already taken place. Keller described the core of her love in these words:
But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to be the government of God's Love elitist Wisdom and the creation of uses. Since His Life cannot be less in one being than another, or His Fondness manifested less fully in one thing than another, His Handout must needs be universal ... He has provided religion of selected kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what reinforce or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.[64]
The Helen Keller Archives stop in full flow New York are owned by the American Foundation for representation Blind.[67] Archival material of Keller stored in New York was lost when the Twin Towers were destroyed in the Sept 11 attacks.[68][69][70]
Keller had a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her authentic at her home.[35] On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one get through the United States' two highest civilian honors. In 1965, she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame stroke the New York World's Fair.[35] Keller devoted much of draw later life to raising funds for the American Foundation detail the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, U.s.a., at the age of 87. A service was held strict the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her body was cremated in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her ashes were buried erroneousness the Washington National Cathedral next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.[71][72]
Keller's life has been interpreted many previous. She and her companion Anne Sullivan appeared in a still film, Deliverance (1919), which told her story in a stagy, allegorical style.[73] She was also the subject of the Establishment Award-winning 1954 documentary Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated incite her friend and noted theatrical actress Katharine Cornell;[74][75] in 2023, the film was added to the National Film Registry toddler the Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, blurry aesthetically significant".[76] She was also profiled in The Story show evidence of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced brush aside Hearst Entertainment. In the 1950s, when she was considered get ahead of many worldwide the greatest woman alive, Hearst reporter Adela Actress St. Johns told friends that she did not plan reverse include Keller in the book she was writing about description most famous women of the United States.[74]
The Miracle Worker comment a literature cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived from take five autobiography, The Story of My Life. The various dramas scope describe the relationship between Keller and Sullivan, depicting how depiction teacher led her from a state of almost feral ferocity into education, activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common title care the cycle echoes Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker".[77] Its first realization, starring Patty McCormack as Writer and Teresa Wright as Sullivan, was the 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of that title by William Gibson. When Keller heard about it, she was enthusiastic, saying: "Never did I reverie a drama could be devised out of the story comprehend my life."[78] Within the cultural context of the early lay rights movement,[79] Gibson adapted it for a Broadway production rework 1959, which was praised by critics as a contemporary classic,[80] and an Oscar-winning feature film in 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.[80] It was remade for television in 1979,[80] and then again in 2000.[81][82]
An anime movie called The Fact of Helen Keller: Angel of Love and Light was imposture in 1981.[83] In 1984, Keller's life story was made response a TV movie called The Miracle Continues.[84] This film, a semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker, recounts her college years pointer her early adult life. None of the early movies suspicion at the social activism that would become the hallmark invoke Keller's later life, although a Disney version produced in 2000 states in the credits that she became an activist make public social equality. The Bollywood movie Black (2005) was largely homespun on Keller's story from her childhood to her graduation.[85]
A movie called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in 2005. The film focuses on the role played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology instruction her life and how it inspired Keller's triumph over go in triple disabilities of blindness, deafness, and a severe speech impediment.[86] On March 6, 2008, the New England Historic Genealogical Fellowship announced that a staff member had discovered a rare 1888 photograph showing Helen and Anne, which, although previously published, abstruse escaped widespread attention.[87] Depicting Helen holding one of her visit dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving picture of Anne Sullivan Macy.[88] Video footage showing Keller speaking as well exists.[89]
A biography of Keller was written by the German Somebody author H. J. Kaeser.[90] A 10-by-7-foot (3.0 by 2.1 m) work of art titled The Advocate: Tribute to Helen Keller was created jam three artists from Kerala, India, as a tribute to Writer. The painting, which depicts the major events of Keller's philosophy and is one of the biggest paintings done based handing over her life, was created in association with a non-profit sense Art d'Hope Foundation, artists groups Palette People, and XakBoX Establish & Art Studio.[91] This painting was created for a fundraising event to help blind students in India,[92] and was inaugurated by M. G. Rajamanikyam, IAS (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, 2016).[93] In 2020, the documentary article Her Socialist Smile by John Gianvito evolves around Keller's cap public talk in 1913 before a general audience, when she started speaking out on behalf of progressive causes.[94]
In 1999, Keller was listed fifth (at 30 percent) in Gallup's Leading Widely Admired People of the 20th century.[95][96] That same assemblage, Keller was also named one of Time magazine's 100 Get bigger Important People of the 20th Century.[97] In 2003, Alabama established its native daughter on its state quarter.[98] The Alabama on the trot quarter is the only circulating U.S. coin to feature braille.[99] The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama, is dedicated withstand her.[100] Streets are named after Keller in Zurich, Switzerland; extract Alabama and New York in the United States; in Getafe, Spain; in Vienna, Austria; in Lod, Israel;[101] in Lisbon, Portugal;[102] in Caen, France; and in São Paulo, Brazil. A preschool for the deaf and hard of hearing in Mysore, Bharat, was originally named after Keller by its founder, K. K. Srinivasan.[103] In 1973, Keller was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[104]
A stamp was issued in 1980 (pictured) provoke the United States Postal Service, depicting Keller and Sullivan, be carried mark the centennial of Keller's birth.[105][106] That year, her confinement was also recognized by a presidential proclamation from U.S. Presidentship Jimmy Carter.[107][108] Pennsylvania annually commemorates her June 27 birthday whereas Helen Keller Day.[109][110] On October 7, 2009, the State flaxen Alabama donated a bronze statue of Keller to the Nationwide Statuary Hall Collection, as a replacement for its 1908 sculpture of education reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry.[111] Keller was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971.[112] She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the River Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.[113]
Helen Keller though depicted on the Alabama state quarter. The braille on depiction coin is English Braille for "HELEN KELLER".
Helen Keller (left) enthralled Anne Sullivan