Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880 to affluent parents who lived on a large estate. Her father was a newspaper editor and had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. At the age of two, Helen was stricken by an acute illness, which many believe to have been scarlet fever. The young Helen survived, but was rendered deaf, dumb, and blind. After travelling to Washington to consult with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, Helen’s parents secured a tutor for her: Anne Sullivan, an instructor from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. Sullivan came to Tuscumbia when Helen was six and began instructing her, helping her to acquire language, learn signs, read braille, and take pleasure in the world around her despite her limitations. Helen’s education took her to Boston, New York, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she studied at Radcliffe College—the women’s college at Harvard University. Helen wrote and published The Story of My Life while still a student at Radcliffe. After her graduation, she went on to become a writer, activist, and lecturer. Helen was an outspoken political radical who supported women’s suffrage, pacifism, socialism, and birth control. She helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union, or the ACLU, and campaigned on behalf of the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World throughout the 1920s. An accomplished writer, Keller published many books and essays over the course of her life, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 for her tireless activism, especially in support of the American Foundation for the Blind. Keller died in her sleep in 1968, and her ashes were placed next to the grave of her constant and beloved teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan, at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.