Helen Keller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Helen Keller
Keller in 1905
Born
June 27, 1880(1880-06-27)
Tuscumbia, Alabama,
USADied
June 1, 1968 (aged 87)Arcan Ridge,
Westport, Connecticut,
USAHelen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an
American author,
activist and lecturer. She was the first
deafblind person to graduate from college.
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
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.
//
Early childhood and illness
Helen Keller, age 8, with her tutor Anne Sullivan while vacationing on Cape Cod, July 1888 (photo re-discovered in 2008)
Helen Keller was born at an estate called
Ivy Green[1] in
Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. 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.
[2] The Keller family originates from
Germany.
[3] She 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. Keller had a particular form of the disease that brought blindness and retardation. 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 age seven, she had over 60
home signs to communicate with her family.
Keller and Sullivan in 1898
In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in
Charles Dickens'
American Notes of the successful education of another deaf and blind child,
Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist in
Baltimore, for advice.
[4] He, subsequently, put them in touch with
Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the
Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in
South Boston. The school delegated teacher and former student
Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor.It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, eventually evolving into
governess and then eventual
companion.
Her first task was to instill discipline in the spoiled girl. Keller's big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on her palm, while running cool water over her hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world (including her prized doll).
Sullivan taught her charge to speak using the
Tadoma method of touching the lips and throat of others as they speak, combined with
fingerspelling letters on the palm of the child's hand. Later Keller learned
Braille and used it to read not only
English but
also
French,
German,
Greek, and
Latin.
Formal education
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 Huttleton Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe
magna cum laude, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
[5]Companions
Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Anne married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914.
Polly Thompson was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who didn't have experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller.
[6]After Anne died in 1936, Keller and Thompson moved to Connecticut. They travelled worldwide raising funding for the blind. Thompson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered, and died in 1960.
[5]Winnie Corbally, a nurse who was originally brought in to care for Polly Thompson in 1957, stayed on after Thompson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life.
[5]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.
Keller and her friend
Mark Twain were both considered radicals in the
socio-political context present in the
United States at the beginning of the 20th century, and as a consequence, their political views have been forgotten or glossed over in popular perception.
[7] Newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the
Brooklyn 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, ridiculous Brooklyn 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.
[8]”
Keller joined the
Industrial Workers of the World (known as the IWW or the Wobblies) in 1912,
[7] saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog." She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW,
[9] Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:
“
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.
”
The last sentence refers to
prostitution and
syphilis, the latter a leading cause of blindness.
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. An investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case of
cryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained in her subconscious.
[5]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 letters that Keller wrote and the story of her life up to age 21, and was written during her time in college.
[5]Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908 giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world.
[10] 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.
In total Keller wrote 12 books and numerous articles.
Akita dog
When Keller visited
Akita Prefecture in
Japan in July 1937, she inquired about
Hachikō, the famed
Akita dog that had died in 1935. She told a Japanese person that she would like to have an Akita dog; one was given to her within a month, with the name of
Kamikaze-go. When he died of
canine distemper, his older brother, Kenzan-go, was presented to her as an official gift from the Japanese government in July 1938. Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita to the United States through these two dogs.
By 1939 a
breed standard had been established and
dog shows had been held, but such activities stopped after
World War II began. Keller wrote in the Akita Journal:
“
If ever there was an angel in fur, it was Kamikaze. I know I shall never feel quite the same tenderness for any other pet. The Akita dog has all the qualities that appeal to me — he is gentle, companionable and trusty.
[11][12]”
Later life
Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.
[5]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.
[13] In 1965 she was elected to the
Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.
[5]Keller devoted much of her later life to raise funds for the
American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on
June 1,
1968, passing away 26 days before her 88th birthday, at her home in
Arcan Ridge near
Westport, Connecticut. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions,
Anne Sullivan and
Polly Thompson.
[5]Portrayals of Helen Keller
Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She appeared in a
silent film,
Deliverance (1919), which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.
[14]She was also the subject of the documentaries
Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by
Katharine Cornell, and The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced by
Hearst Entertainment.
The Miracle Worker is a
cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived from her autobiography,
The Story of My Life. The various dramas each describe the relationship between Keller and Sullivan, depicting how the teacher led her from a state of almost
feral wildness into education, activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common title of the cycle echoes
Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker". Its first realization was the 1957
Playhouse 90 teleplay of that title by
William Gibson. He adapted it for a
Broadway production in 1959 and an Oscar-winning
feature film in 1962. It was remade for television in 1969 and 2000.
She was also the subject of the documentaries
Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by
Katharine Cornell, and The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced by
Hearst Entertainment.
In 1984, Helen Keller's life story was made into a
TV movie called
The Miracle Continues.
[15] This film that entailed the semi-sequel to The 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
The Walt Disney Company version produced in 2000 states in the credits that she became an activist for
social equality.
The
Bollywood movie
Black (2005) was largely based on Keller's story, from her childhood to her graduation. A
documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by the
Swedenborg Foundation in the same year. The film focuses on the role played by
Emanuel 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.
On March 6, 2008, the
New 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.
[16] Depicting Helen holding one of her many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne.
[17]In 2008
Arcana Comics began publishing
Helen Killer, a comic book by
Andrew Kreisberg with art by
Matthew Rice. In it, a college aged Keller is given a device which allows her to see and hear and which increases her physical abilities, at which point she is hired to protect the President of the United States.
[18][19]Posthumous honors
Helen Keller as depicted on the Alabama state quarter
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.
[20]The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama is dedicated to her.
[21]There is a street named after Helen Keller in
Getafe,
Spain.In 1984, Helen Keller's life story was made into a
TV movie called
The Miracle Continues