The American Helen Adams Keller wrote books, campaigned for people with disabilities, was active in politics, and gave talks. She was born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, but she become blind and deaf when she was 19 months old due to an illness.
Until she was seven years old, when she met her first teacher and lifelong friend Anne Sullivan, she relied solely on house signals as her means of communication. Sullivan instructed Keller in the English language and its writing and reading.
After spending time in both specialised and regular classrooms, Keller enrolled at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and made history by being the first deafblind person to achieve a Bachelor of Arts degree.
From 1924 to 1968, she served in various capacities with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). During that time, she visited 35 different countries to spread awareness about the plight of people with vision impairment all over the world.
How Did Helen Keller Enter The World?
On June 27, 1880, a healthy baby girl named Helen Adams Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Katie’s mom and dad were Kate Adams Keller and Colonel Arthur Keller.
She traced her ancestry back to a colonial governor of Virginia (Colonel Alexander Spottswood) on her father’s side and to several influential families in New England on her mother’s side.
Arthur Keller, Helen’s father, served as a captain in the Confederate army. Having lost much of their fortune during the Civil War, the family now leads a somewhat simple existence.
Captain Keller, after the war, edited the local paper the North Alabamian, and in 1885, during the Cleveland administration, he was named Marshal of North Alabama.
Helen lost her hearing and vision at 19 months old due to an unidentified infection, maybe rubella or scarlet fever. Helen was a wild and disobedient child from the time she was a toddler onward.
When Did Anne Sullivan And Helen Keller First Meet?
There was a turning point in her life on March 3, 1887, a date she would return to repeatedly in her adult years. To teach her, Anne Mansfield Sullivan had just arrived in Tuscumbia.
Anne, at age 20, was a Perkins School for the Blind alum. Anne had an entirely different upbringing and background than Helen. She spent four terrible years as a ward of the state in the Tewksbury Almshouse in Massachusetts before entering Perkins as a 14-year-old. Her parents were Irish immigrants who came from poverty.
She had the same severe visual issues as her student Helen, yet she was just 14 years older than Helen. Anne’s vision was partially restored after a series of failed surgeries she endured as a child.
The film The Miracle Worker has done a lot to spread the word about Anne and Helen’s incredible narrative of triumph.
Helen was portrayed accurately in the film as a brat who ruled the family with her tantrums and spoiledness despite her intelligence.
Anne thought that the best way to reach Helen was to instil in her a sense of obedience and affection.
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She realised she had to set limits for her young charge without breaking her will. Therefore, she was able to convince her host family to let her relocate Helen out of the main house and into a cottage not even a week after she arrived. Two weeks passed while they were there.
Anne started off her job of educating Helen by physically signing into the child’s hand. Anne had brought a doll to give to Helen that she and the kids at Perkins had crafted. She wanted to teach the little girl to associate the letters in the word “doll” with the objects they represented.
Helen picked up the correct letter formation and order fast, but she had no idea that she was spelling a word or that words really existed. Over the next few days, she memorised many more words to spell in this incomprehensible fashion.
Political And Social Engagement On Helen Keller’s Part
Writing was Helen’s first love, and she even put “author” as her occupation on her passport. Helen’s written word was the channel through which she first reached Americans and then thousands all over the world.
She has always been a fierce advocate for marginalised groups, using her writing talents to expose injustice and change minds from a young age. As a pacifist, she opposed the United States’ participation in World War I.
She became an activist for workers’ rights and was a staunch socialist. She was an early ACLU member and a fervent supporter of the cause of women’s suffrage.
Helen’s work for the American Foundation for the Blind was the purest, most enduring manifestation of her principles (AFB). Helen began working for AFB in 1924 and retired after nearly 50 years with the company.
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The organisation gave her a global voice to champion the rights of the visually impaired, and she used it to its full potential. Her journeys across the country led to the establishment of state commissions for the blind, the development of rehabilitation centres, and the expansion of educational opportunities for those with visual impairments.
During her visits to veteran’s hospitals for soldiers returning from battle during World War II, Helen’s optimism and courage were felt on a deeply personal level.
Helen took great pride in the fact that she had played a role in the establishment, in 1946, of a specialised service for the deaf-blind. Her words of hope and perseverance in the face of tragedy struck a chord with the war veterans who were returning from the battlefield with physical scars.
Helen Keller cared just as much about the plight of blind people around the world as she did about those in her own country. She was especially concerned about the conditions in developing and war-torn countries.
Helen was a phenomenally effective advocate for people with disabilities all over the world because of her capacity for empathy toward the plight of the individual citizen and her ability to work with world leaders to change international policy on eyesight loss.
Her involvement in this field dates all the way back to 1915, when she helped found the Permanent Blind War Relief Fund (later renamed the American Braille Press), which was instrumental in creating this format. Initially, she served on its board of directors.
When the American Braille Press morphed into the American Foundation for Overseas Blind in 1946 (now known as Helen Keller International), Helen took on the role of counsellor on international relations. After that, she started travelling the world to advocate for the blind.
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Conclusion
Girma thinks that more needs to be done to educate students about Helen Keller’s entire life and career, and suggests that students study more of Keller’s works to gain a better understanding of who she was as an adult. To date, Keller has authored 14 books and delivered over 475 lectures and essays.
