Helen Keller (1880-1968) was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. No woman in our history has exhibited greater courage or been more accomplished in the face of disability. Helen was blind and deaf but was not born that way. She became ill at the age of 19 months when she lost both of those two senses. Doctors today think she may have had meningitis or severe influenza. Whatever it was, the loss was devastating for a youngster just learning to navigate in the world.
Helen was born to relative wealth. Her family owned a generational home known as Ivy Glen. Her ancestors were slaveholders and part of the Confederate elite. Helen’s father, a former Confederate Captain, was the local newspaper editor for many years, and the family was blessed with financial stability.
In an effort to communicate, Helen Keller’s beleaguered brain had created over sixty signs that allowed the young girl to pass on her needs on a rudimentary level. It was not enough. Keller’s mother grew increasingly concerned about her daughter and consulted by mail with experts in the field of the visually impaired. As a result of that communication, she sent young Helen and her father to Baltimore to get recommendations from those who knew about blindness and deafness. Alexander Graham Bell is one of those who met with Helen and her father. The two were sent to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. The director of the school asked a recent graduate, a young woman, Annie Sullivan, who was visually impaired herself, to be Helen’s teacher and companion. It was the beginning of a lifelong relationship.
Annie returned to Ivy Green with Helen and her father to teach young Helen. It took over a month, but the sharp mind of Helen Keller finally realized that Annie Sullivan was spelling the words in her hands for objects. It was the opening of the world for the young woman who had existed in what she called “at sea, in a dense fog.” Keller recalled it as her soul in an instantaneous reawakening, and indeed the recreation of the event in “The Miracle Worker” plays it out as one. In the play and movie, the young Helen suddenly understands that the spelling was meant to represent objects and her senses, feeling, tasting, and smelling. It was truly a miracle and the opening of another life for Helen Keller.
A year later, with Annie Sullivan by her side, Helen Keller began her formal education at the Perkins Institute for the blind in Boston. Six years later, Helen and Annie moved to New York so that Helen could attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf. Two years later, Helen and Annie moved back to Massachusetts, where Helen attended a finishing school for young ladies before her entrance to Radcliff at Harvard. There she became the first blind-deaf person to earn a bachelor’s degree. Mark Twain was a fan of Helen’s and introduced her to oil magnate Henry Rogers who paid for her education. Her ability to earn the degree, pass exams and prove that she understood language and information was an amazing feat for a woman of her disabilities and of the time.
In 1903 before receiving her degree, Helen Keller published her autobiography with the help of Annie Sullivan and Sullivan’s fiancée, John Macy. It was titled “My Life” and recounted her experiences until age twenty-one. It became the basis for the stage and radio play, “The Miracle Worker,” and later the 1962 movie that earned Best Actress Academy Awards for Anne Bancroft and Best Supporting Actress for a then 16-year-old Patty Duke.
After receiving her degree Helen and Annie moved to Queens, New York, and used that as a home base for her travels. Helen advocated for persons with disabilities and was a suffragette and a socialist. She supported the early efforts of organizations that advocated for the rights of others, like the NAACP, and she helped found the ACLU. She was a popular speaker and always drew crowds when she was scheduled to speak. Sometimes her advocacy and positions brought her criticism. Helen Keller traveled not just in the United States but abroad to thirty-five different countries. Annie Sullivan married John Macy and continued to work for Helen.
Helen was engaged herself for a time to a young newspaper reporter for the Boston Herald, Peter Fagan. Fagan was also a socialist and was considered radical for his time. Against the wishes of family and friends, they attempted to elope. Fagan was serving as her temporary secretary for Annie Sullivan when she became ill and unable to serve Helen in that capacity. For Helen, the burdens of her disability and the engagement proved too much for her without the support of Annie and her family. The engagement was called off. Helen returned to Alabama to stay with her family for a time. In an effort to regain her independence, Helen found a helpmate. Polly Thomson went from housekeeping for Helen Keller to constant companion and secretary for her on her many adventures.
At some point, Helen Keller had eye surgery. The results of her childhood illness had left her with one of her unfunctional eyes bulging. She had both eyes removed and replaced with artificial ones to give her an appearance of normalcy. She had speech therapy so her voice could be better understood. Helen worked continually to look and behave within the spectrum of acceptability, realizing that was important.
Thomson and Helen Keller moved to Connecticut, where Helen Keller worked for many years as an advocate and fundraiser for the blind. Annie Sullivan died in 1936 with Helen Keller by her side. Thomson remained with Helen Keller until she herself had a stroke and was unable to care for Keller’s personal needs. Thomson’s nurse remained with Helen and cared for her for the rest of her life.
During her lifetime Helen did unimaginable things for a person with her disabilities. She learned to speak without the ability to see and hear speech. She traveled widely, published many books, and had a life that many of those who have all senses intact never get to experience. She was inarguably intelligent, driven, and an example of courage and fortitude in a nightmare existence most of us cannot conceive. Her own will and her sharp mind, as well as that of her teacher Annie Sullivan, freed her from the fog of solitude.
During her lifetime Helen not only raised funds for the blind but advocated for the eye cleansing of newborn babies, likely saving the sight of untold numbers of them. Gallup considered her one of the most widely acclaimed people of the twentieth century. In 1964 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson. In 2003 the state of Alabama honored her on a quarter with the name Helen Keller in braille, the only coin in existence using that mode of communication.
Helen Keller’s birthplace and the site where she gained her communication abilities via Annie Sullivan is Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is managed by the Helen Keller Birthplace Foundation.
Helen Keller died June 1, 1968, in Connecticut at eighty-seven. She is famous for saying, “The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.” Fitting words for an advocate who lived her life with that conviction.
Many of the original archival records of Helen Keller were storied at the American Foundation for the Blind in New York. Many were destroyed with the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
Helen Keller has been immortalized in an untold number of movies, books, and features. Her own written works are extensive. They include:
“The Frost King” (1891)
The Story of My Life (1903)
Optimism: an essay (1903) by T. Y. Crowell and company
My Key of Life: Optimism (1904), Isbister
The World I Live In (1908)
The miracle of life (1909) Hodder and Stoughton
The song of the stone wall (1910) The Century co.
Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism (1913)
Uncle Sam Is Calling (set to music by Pauline B. Story) (1917)
My Religion (1927; also called Light in My Darkness)
Midstream: my later life (1929) Doubleday, Doran & Company
We Bereaved.(1929) L. Fulenwider, Inc
Peace at eventide (1932) Methuen & co. ltd
Helen Keller in Scotland: a personal record written by herself (1933) Methuen, 212pp
Helen Keller’s journal (1938) M. Joseph, 296pp
Let us have faith (1940), Doubleday, & Doran & co., inc.
Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy: a tribute by the foster child of her mind. (1955), Doubleday (publisher)
The open door (1957), Doubleday, 140pp
The faith of Helen Keller (1967)
Helen Keller: her socialist years, writings, and speeches (1967)
