Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author,disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in WestTuscumbia, Alabama, shelost her sight andher hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily usinghome signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companionAnne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attendedRadcliffe College ofHarvard University and became the firstdeafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.[1]
Keller was born Helen Adams Keller on June 27, 1880, inTuscumbia, Alabama, the daughter of Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896),[6] and Catherine Everett (née Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known as "Kate".[7][8] The Keller family lived on ahomestead,Ivy Green,[4] which her paternal grandfather had built decades earlier.[9] She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (née Keller) Tyson and 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 father worked for many years as an editor of the TuscumbiaNorth Alabamian. He had served as a captain in theConfederate Army.[8][9] The family was part of theslaveholding elite beforethe American Civil War, but lost status later.[9] Her mother was the daughter ofCharles W. Adams, a Confederate general.[12] Keller's paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.[13][14] One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf inZürich. Keller reflected on this fact in her first autobiography, asserting that "there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his".[13]
At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain".[15] Contemporary doctors believe it may have beenmeningitis, caused by the bacteriumNeisseria meningitidis (meningococcus),[16] or possiblyHaemophilus influenzae, which can cause the same symptoms but is less likely because of its 97% juvenile mortality rate at that time.[8][17] She was able to recover from her illness, but was left permanently blind and deaf, as she recalled in her autobiography, "at sea in a dense fog".[18] At that time, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, who was two years older and the daughter of the family cook, and understood the girl's signs;[19]: 11 by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60home signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibration of their footsteps.[20]
In 1886, Keller's mother, inspired by an account inCharles Dickens'American Notes of the successful education ofLaura Bridgman, a deaf and blind woman, dispatched the young Keller and her father to consult physician J. Julian Chisholm, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist inBaltimore, for advice.[21][9] Chisholm referred the Kellers toAlexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised them to contact thePerkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated. It was then located inSouth Boston. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, askedAnne Sullivan, a 20-year-old alumna of the school who was visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a nearly 50-year-long relationship Sullivan developed with Keller as hergoverness and later hercompanion.[19]
Sullivan arrived at Keller's house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever remember as "my soul's birthday".[18] Sullivan immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller initially struggled with lessons since she could not comprehend that every object had a word identifying it. When Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug.[22] Keller remembered how she soon began imitating Sullivan's hand gestures: "I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed. I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation."[23]
The next month, Keller made a breakthrough, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water". Writing in her autobiography,The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment:
I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free![18]
Keller quickly demanded that Sullivan sign the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.[24]
Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech using theTadoma method, which means using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker.[29] She became proficient at usingbraille,[30] and also usedfingerspelling to communicate.[31] Shortly before World War I, with the assistance of theZoellner Quartet, she determined that by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could experience music played close by.[32]
Companions
Helen Keller in 1899 with lifelong companion and teacher Anne Sullivan. Photo taken byAlexander Graham Bell at his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech.
Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Keller long 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 keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller.[34]
Keller moved toForest Hills, Queens, together with Sullivan and Macy, and used the house as a base for her efforts on behalf of theAmerican Foundation for the Blind.[35] While in her 30s, Keller had a love affair and became secretly engaged; she also defied her teacher and family by attempting anelopement with the man she loved,[36] Peter Fagan, who was known as "the fingerspelling socialist",[9] and was a youngBoston Herald reporter sent to Keller's home to act as her private secretary when Sullivan fell ill. At the time, her father had died and Sullivan was recovering inLake Placid andPuerto Rico. Keller had moved with her mother toMontgomery, Alabama.[9]
Sullivan died in 1936, with Keller holding her hand,[37] after falling into a coma as a result ofcoronary thrombosis.[38]: 266 Keller and Thomson moved toConnecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funds for 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 for the rest of her life.[35]
Akita dogs
Helen Keller with her second AkitaKenzan-Go
Keller was very fond of Akita dogs. She visitedAkita Prefecture in June 1937 and asked aboutHachikō, a loyal dog who searched for his deceased master for about 10 years. She began keeping Akitas as pets and introduced them to America. In 1948 she touched there-made statue of Hachikō at Shibuya Station.[39] The first Akita given to her wasKamikaze-Go, who was the first Akita to travel overseas from Japan and the first Akita in America. He died of an infection two months after arriving in America and Keller was givenKamikaze-Go's brother,Kenzan-Go.[40][41][42] Keller nicknamed the dog Go-Go and they were great companions from day one. Go-Go even spent his first night at Keller's home sleeping at the foot of her bed.[43]
Career, writing and political activities
Helen Keller portrait, 1904. Due to a protruding left eye, Keller was usually photographed in profile until she had her eyes replaced,c. 1911, withglass replicas for "medical and cosmetic reasons".[44][45]
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control of their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.
On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town ofMenomonie in westernWisconsin to deliver a lecture at theMabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details of her talk were provided in the weeklyDunn County News on January 22, 1916:
A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness", and it will be remembered always as a piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it.[47]
Keller became a world-famous speaker and author. She was anadvocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions.[48] She was asuffragist,pacifist,Christian socialist,birth control supporter, and opponent ofWoodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler founded theHelen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health, and nutrition. In 1916, she sent money to theNAACP, as she was ashamed of the Southern un-Christian treatment of "colored people".[9]
Keller, who believed that the poor were "ground down by industrial oppression",[46] wanted children born into poor families to have the same opportunities to succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone."[50]
In 1909, Keller became a member of theSocialist Party of America (SPA); she actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the effects of war; in addition, she supported causes that opposedmilitary intervention.[51] She had speech therapy to have her voice understood better by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published.[38]
Keller supported the SPA candidateEugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before readingProgress and Poverty byHenry George, she was already asocialist who believed thatGeorgism was a good step in the right direction.[52] She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature".[53] Keller stated that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of theBrooklyn Eagle wrote that her "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 time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. ... Oh, ridiculousBrooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.[54]
In 1912, Keller joined theIndustrial Workers of the World (the IWW, known as the Wobblies),[49] saying thatparliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. InWhy I Became an IWW, Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:[55]
I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame that ended in blindness.[55]
The last sentence refers to prostitution andsyphilis, the former a "life of shame" that women used to support themselves, which contributed to their contracting syphilis. Untreated, it was a leading cause of blindness. In the same interview, Keller also cited the1912 strike of textile workers inLawrence, Massachusetts, for instigating her support of socialism.[55] As a result of her advocacy, she was placed on theFBI's watchlist;[56] the FBI wrote on July 1, 1953, that although they have not "conducted an investigation with regard to Helen Adams Keller", their files of Keller "reflect the following pertinent information concerning this individual".[57]
Keller supportedeugenics, which had become popular with both new understandings and misapprehensions of principles of biological inheritance. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals.[38]: pp. 36–37 [58] Keller also expressed concerns abouthuman overpopulation.[59][60][unreliable source?] From 1946 to 1957, Keller visited 35 countries.[61] In 1948, she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools inChristchurch andAuckland. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch.[62]
Works
Helen Keller, c. November 1912
Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles. One of her earliest pieces of writing, at age 11, wasThe Frost King (1891). There were allegations that this story had beenplagiarized fromThe Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case ofcryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained in her subconscious.[35]
At age 22, with help from Sullivan and Sullivan's husband John Macy, Keller published her autobiography,The Story of My Life (1903).[63] It recounts the story of her life up to age 21 and was written during her time in college. In an article Keller wrote in 1907, she brought to public attention the fact that many cases of childhood blindness could be prevented by washing the eyes of every newborn baby with a disinfectant solution. At the time, only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing this. Thanks to Keller's advocacy, this commonsense public health measure was swiftly and widely adopted.[50][64]
Keller wroteThe World I Live In in 1908, giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world.[65]Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913. When Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her toPhillips Brooks, who introduced her to Christianity, Keller famously saying: "I always knew He was there, but I didn't know His name!"[66][67][68]
Herspiritual autobiography,My Religion,[69] was published in 1927 and then in 1994 extensively revised by Ray Silverman,[70] and re-issued under the titleLight in My Darkness. It advocates the teachings ofEmanuel Swedenborg, the Christian theologian and mystic who gave a spiritual interpretation of the teachings of the Bible and who claimed that theSecond Coming ofJesus Christ had already taken place. Keller described the core of her belief in these words:
But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to be the government of God's Love and Wisdom and the creation of uses. Since His Life cannot be less in one being than another, or His Love manifested less fully in one thing than another, His Providence must needs be universal ... He has provided religion of some kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what race or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.[69]
Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She and her companion Anne Sullivan appeared in a silent film,Deliverance (1919), which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.[78] She was also the subject of theAcademy Award-winning 1954 documentaryHelen Keller in Her Story, narrated by her friend and noted theatrical actressKatharine Cornell;[79][80] in 2023, the film was added to theNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[81] She was also profiled inThe Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced byHearst Entertainment. In the 1950s, when she was considered by many worldwide the greatest woman alive, Hearst reporterAdela Rogers St. Johns told friends that she did not plan to include Keller in the book she was writing about the most famous women of the United States.[79]
An anime movie calledThe Story of Helen Keller: Angel of Love and Light was made in 1981.[88] In 1984, Keller's life story was made into a TV movie calledThe Miracle Continues.[89] This film, a semi-sequel toThe Miracle Worker, recounts her college years and her early adult life. None of the early movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark of Keller's later life, although aDisney version produced in 2000 states in the credits that she became an activist forsocial equality. TheBollywood movieBlack (2005) was largely based on Keller's story from her childhood to her graduation.[90]
A documentary calledShining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in 2005. The film focuses on the role played byEmanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology in her life and how it inspired Keller's triumph over her triple disabilities of blindness, deafness, and a severe speech impediment.[91] On March 6, 2008, theNew England Historic Genealogical Society announced that a staff member had discovered a rare 1888 photograph showing Helen and Anne, which, although previously published, had escaped widespread attention.[92] Depicting Helen holding one of her many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne Sullivan Macy.[93] Video footage showing Keller speaking also exists.[94]
A biography of Keller was written by the German Jewish authorH. J. Kaeser.[95]
A painting tribute to Helen Keller "The Advocate" done by three artists from Kerala, India.
A 10-by-7-foot (3.0 by 2.1 m) painting titledThe Advocate: Tribute to Helen Keller was created by three artists fromKerala, India, as a tribute to Keller. The painting, which depicts the major events of Keller's life and is one of the biggest paintings done based on her life, was created in association with a non-profit organization ArtD'Hope Foundation, artists groups Palette People, and XakBoX Design & Art Studio.[96] This painting was created for a fundraising event to help blind students in India,[97] and was inaugurated by M. G. Rajamanickam, IAS (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, 2016).[98]
In 2020, the documentary essayHer Socialist Smile byJohn Gianvito evolves around Keller's first public talk in 1913 before a general audience, when she started speaking out on behalf ofprogressive causes.[99]
^abKeller, Helen (1905)."The Story of My Life". New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.Archived from the original on January 14, 2016. RetrievedMarch 15, 2016.
^Herbert Gantschacher "Back from History! – The correspondence of letters between the Austrian-Jewish philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem and the Americandeafblind writer Helen Keller", Gebärdensache, Vienna 2009, p. 35ff.
^Johnson-Thompson, Keller."Ask Keller – March 2005".Braille Bug. American Printing House for the Blind.Archived from the original on March 7, 2021. RetrievedMarch 17, 2021.
^Herrmann, Dorothy (1999).Helen Keller: A Life.University of Chicago Press. pp. 180–181.ISBN978-0-226-32763-1.Archived from the original on January 9, 2022. RetrievedNovember 17, 2021.For years she had always been carefully photographed in right profile to hide her left eye, which was protruding and obviously blind. Aware that she would now be exposed to the merciless gaze of the public, she had both eyes surgically removed and replaced with glass ones.
^Selsdon, Helen (July 29, 2015)."Helen Keller: An Artificial Eye". American Foundation for the Blind.Archived from the original on January 9, 2022. RetrievedSeptember 23, 2021.
^abKeller, Helen (2003). Davis, John (ed.).Rebel Lives. Ocean Press. p. 57.ISBN978-1-876175-60-3.
^abcBindley, Barbara (January 16, 1916)."Why I Became an IWW".New York Tribune.Archived from the original on September 7, 2021. RetrievedDecember 21, 2021 – via Helen Keller Reference Archive.
^Pelka, Fred (September 2001)."Helen Keller & the FBI".The Disability Rag. No. 5.Archived from the original on November 15, 2024. RetrievedDecember 24, 2024.
^"Helen Keller".Women of the Hall.Archived from the original on November 21, 2018. RetrievedNovember 21, 2018.
^Keller, Helen (January 1907)."Unnecessary Blindness".The Ladies' Home Journal.Archived from the original on December 6, 2021. RetrievedDecember 6, 2021.
^Willmington, H. L. (1981).Willmington's Guide to the Bible. Wheaton, Illinois:Tyndale House Publishers. p. 591.ISBN978-0-8423-8804-7. RetrievedMarch 15, 2016.Sometime after she had progressed to the point that she could engage in conversation, she was told of God and his love in sending Christ to die on the cross. She is said to have responded with joy, "I always knew he was there, but I didn't know his name!"
^Helms, Harold E. (April 30, 2004).God's Final Answer. Xulon Press. p. 78.ISBN978-1-59467-410-5.Archived from the original on May 8, 2020. RetrievedMarch 15, 2016.A favorite story about Helen Keller concerns her first introduction to the gospel. When Helen, who was both blind and deaf, learned to communicate, Anne Sullivan, her teacher, decided that it was time for her to hear about Jesus Christ. Anne called for Phillips Brooks, the most famous preacher in Boston. With Sullivan interpreting for him, he talked to Helen Keller about Christ. It wasn't long until a smile lighted up her face. Through her teacher she said, "Mr. Brooks, I have always known about God, but until now I didn't know His name."
^Dickinson, Mary Lowe; Avary, Myrta Lockett (1901).Heaven, Home And Happiness. The Christian Herald. p. 216. RetrievedMarch 15, 2016.Phillips Brooks began to tell her about God, who God was, what he had done, how he loved me, and what he was to us. The child listened very intently. Then she looked up and said, "Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn't know His name."
^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3rd ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 24973-24974). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
^"About". Helen Keller Hospital. Archived fromthe original on August 8, 2024. RetrievedDecember 24, 2024.
^Bush, Lawrence (June 26, 2016)."June 27: Helen Keller and the Jews".Jewish Currents.Archived from the original on December 24, 2024. RetrievedDecember 24, 2024. See also"רחוב הלן קלר, לוד" [Helen Keller Street, Lod] (in Hebrew). Google Maps. January 1, 1970.Archived from the original on January 9, 2022. RetrievedJuly 24, 2011.
^"Avenida Helen Keller".Toponímia de Lisboa (in Portuguese). January 6, 1968. Archived fromthe original on March 24, 2012. RetrievedJuly 24, 2011.
^Mathews, Bill (November 29, 2010)."Alabama Women's Hall of Fame".Encyclopedia of Alabama. RetrievedDecember 24, 2024. Last updated November 27, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
