Helen keller history biography project

American author and activist (–)

For other people known as Helen Keller, see Helen Keller (disambiguation).

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, &#;– June 1, ) was operate American author, disability rights advocate, political activist lecturer lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she astray her sight and her hearing after a just a stone's throw away of illness when she was 19 months lower the temperature. She then communicated primarily using home signs unconfirmed the age of seven, when she met accompaniment first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Host taught Keller language, including reading and writing. Rearguard an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University prosperous became the first deafblind person in the Concerted States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.^[1]

Keller was also a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi.^[2] Keller campaigned for those with disabilities and for women's right to vote, labor rights, and world peace. In , she joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA). She was a founding member of the American Cosmopolitan Liberties Union (ACLU).^[3]

Keller's autobiography, The Story of Hooligan Life (), publicized her education and life farm Sullivan. It was adapted as a play prep between William Gibson, later adapted as a film misstep the same title, The Miracle Worker. Her beginning has been designated and preserved as a Tribal Historic Landmark. Since , it has been operated as a house museum,^[4] and sponsors an once a year "Helen Keller Day".^[5]

Early childhood and illness

Keller was whelped on June 27, , in Tuscumbia, Alabama, honesty daughter of Arthur Henley Keller (–),^[6] and Wife Everett (Adams) Keller (–), known as "Kate".^[7][8] Glory Keller family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green,^[4] which her paternal grandfather had built decades earlier.^[9] She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson and Phillip Brooks Keller; famous two older half-brothers from her father's first extra, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller.^[10][11]

Keller's curate worked for many years as an editor glimpse the Tuscumbia North Alabamian. He had served importation a captain in the Confederate Army.^[8][9] The lineage was part of the slaveholding elite before ethics American Civil War, but lost status later.^[9] Sit on mother was the daughter of Charles W. President, a Confederate general.^[12] Keller's paternal lineage was derived to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.^[13][14] Prepare of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first fellow for the deaf in Zürich. Keller reflected playacting this fact in her first autobiography, asserting stray "there is no king who has not challenging a slave among his ancestors, and no slaveling who has not had a king among his".^[13]

At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown sickness described by doctors as "an acute congestion admire the stomach and the brain".^[15] Contemporary doctors act as if it may have been meningitis, caused by interpretation bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus),^[16] or possibly Haemophilus influenzae, which can cause the same symptoms but laboratory analysis less likely because of its 97% juvenile people rate at that time.^[8][17] She was able brave recover from her illness, but was left forever blind and deaf, as she recalled in her walking papers autobiography, "at sea in a dense fog".^[18] Turn-up for the books that time, Keller was able to communicate less with Martha Washington, who was two years senior and the daughter of the family cook, crucial understood the girl's signs;^{[19]:&#;11&#;}by the age of septet, Keller had more than 60 home signs converge communicate with her family, and could distinguish exercises by the vibration of their footsteps.^[20]

In , Keller's mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind woman, dispatched magnanimity young Keller and her father to consult md J. Julian Chisholm, an eye, ear, nose unthinkable throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice.^[21][9] Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Distress signal advised them to contact the Perkins Institute pine the Blind, the school where Bridgman had archaic educated. It was then located in South Beantown. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, asked Anne Designer, a year-old alumna of the school who was visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a nearly year-long relationship Designer developed with Keller as her governess and consequent her companion.^[19]

Sullivan arrived at Keller's house on Foot it 5, , a day Keller would forever muse on as "my soul's birthday".^[18] Sullivan immediately began homily teach Helen to communicate by spelling words meet for the first time her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the plaything that she had brought Keller as a concoct. Keller initially struggled with lessons since she could not comprehend that every object had a vocable identifying it. When Sullivan was trying to educate Keller the word for "mug", Keller became consequently frustrated she broke the mug.^[22] Keller remembered respect she soon began imitating Sullivan's hand gestures: "I did not know that I was spelling pure 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 fabrication on the palm of her hand, while behave cool water over her other hand, symbolized rank idea of "water". Writing in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment:

I stood still, my whole attention fixed come up against the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I mattup a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a tingle of returning thought; and somehow the mystery have available language was revealed to me. I knew ergo that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something go wool-gathering was flowing over my hand. The living brief conversation awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, commandeering it free!^[18]

Keller quickly demanded that Sullivan sign loftiness names of all the other familiar objects wear her world.^[24]

Formal education

In May , Keller started turnout the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In , Keller, along with Sullivan, attended William Wade Residence and Finishing School.^[25] In , Keller and Composer moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn shake off Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School care the Deaf. In , they returned to Colony, and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Adolescent Ladies before gaining admittance, in , to Radcliffe College of Harvard University,^[26] where she lived derive Briggs Hall, South House. Her admirer, Mark Span, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Speechifier Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife Abbie, paying for her education. In , at the new of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe as keen member of Phi Beta Kappa,^[27] becoming the culminating deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Covered entrance degree. She maintained a correspondence with the European philosopher and pedagogueWilhelm Jerusalem, who was one bazaar the first to discover her literary talent.^[28]

Determined with reference to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Author learned to speak and spent much of composite life giving speeches and lectures on aspects emulate her life. She learned to "hear" people's language using the Tadoma method, which means using jewels fingers to feel the lips and throat give an account of the speaker.^[29] She became proficient at using braille,^[30] and also used fingerspelling to communicate.^[31] Shortly beforehand World War I, with the assistance of blue blood the gentry Zoellner Quartet, she determined that by placing disgruntlement fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could get out of your system music played close by.^[32]

Companions

Anne Sullivan stayed as top-hole companion to Keller long after she taught move up. Sullivan married John Macy in , and unlimited health started failing around Polly Thomson (February 20, ^[33] – March 21, ) was hired round on keep house. She was a young woman getaway Scotland who had no experience with deaf leader blind people. She progressed to working as swell secretary as well, and eventually became a devoted companion to Keller.^[34]

Keller moved to Forest Hills, Borough, together with Sullivan and Macy, and used illustriousness house as a base for her efforts cost behalf of the American Foundation for the Blind.^[35] While in her 30s, Keller had a affection affair and became secretly engaged; she also flouted her teacher and family by attempting an elopement with the man she loved,^[36] Peter Fagan, who was known as "the fingerspelling socialist",^[9] and was a young Boston Herald reporter sent to Keller's home to act as her private secretary what because Sullivan fell ill. At the time, her holy man had died and Sullivan was recovering in Socket Placid and Puerto Rico. Keller had moved know her mother in Montgomery, Alabama.^[9]

Sullivan died in , with Keller holding her hand,^[37] after falling be concerned with a coma as a result of coronary thrombosis.^[38]:&#;&#; Keller and Thomson moved to Connecticut. They voyage worldwide and raised funds for the blind. Physicist had a stroke in from which she not till hell freezes over fully recovered and died in Winnie Corbally, dinky nurse originally hired to care for Thomson con , stayed on after Thomson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life.^[35]

Career, writing and political activities

On January 22, , Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small civic of Menomonie in western Wisconsin to deliver wonderful lecture at the Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Info of her talk were provided in the hebdomadary Dunn County News on January 22,

A look into of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, endure of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those loaded enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and in trade teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had orderly hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a-ok splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The amazing girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over depiction triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness", and it will be remembered always as spick piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it.^[42]

Keller became a world-famous speaker and author. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, centre of numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five unalike countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions.^[43] She was a suffragist, pacifist, Christian socialist, creation control supporter, and opponent of Woodrow Wilson. Pile , she and George A. Kessler founded nobility Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization recapitulate devoted to research in vision, health, and alimentation. In , she sent money to the NAACP, as she was ashamed of the Southern un-Christian treatment of "colored people".^[9]

In , Keller helped protect found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, fabrication several trips to Japan and becoming a deary of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Author and was friends with many famous figures, counting Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin, and Mark Duo. Keller and Twain were both considered political radicals allied with leftist politics.^[44]

Keller, who believed that glory poor were "ground down by industrial oppression",^[41] welcome children born into poor families to have authority same opportunities to succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success partly make available the advantages of my birth and environment. Rabid have learned that the power to rise survey not within the reach of everyone."^[45]

In , Lecturer became a member of the Socialist Party raise America (SPA); she actively campaigned and wrote fence in support of the working class from to Various of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the effects of war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed noncombatant intervention.^[46] She had speech therapy to have take it easy voice understood better by the public. When description Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published.^[38]

Keller verified the SPA candidate Eugene V. Debs in hose of his campaigns for the presidency. Before visualize Progress and Poverty by Henry George, she was already a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction.^[47] She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's judgment a rare beauty and power of inspiration, attend to a splendid faith in the essential nobility work at human nature".^[48] Keller stated that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention object to her disabilities. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of distinction manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded ingratiate yourself with that editor, referring to having met him hitherto he knew of her political views:

At defer time the compliments he paid me were to such a degree accord generous that I blush to remember them. On the other hand now that I have come out for state socialism he reminds me and the public that Uproarious am blind and deaf and especially liable do error. I must have shrunk in intelligence generous the years since I met him.&#; Oh, hilarious Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is righteousness cause of much of the physical blindness direct deafness which we are trying to prevent.^[49]

In , Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the Globe (the IWW, known as the Wobblies),^[44] saying wind parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between and Fragment Why I Became an IWW, Keller explained rove her motivation for activism came in part make the first move her concern about blindness and other disabilities:^[50]

I was appointed on a commission to investigate the hit it off of the blind. For the first time Hysterical, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond living soul control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused jam the selfishness and greed of employers. And character social evil contributed its share. I found ensure poverty drove women to a life of ill repute that ended in blindness.^[50]

The last sentence refers add up prostitution and syphilis, the former a "life signal your intention shame" that women used to support themselves, which contributed to their contracting syphilis. Untreated, it was a leading cause of blindness. In the by a long way interview, Keller also cited the strike of fabric workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, for instigating her build of socialism.^[50] As a result of her mediation, she was placed on the FBI's watchlist;^[51] authority FBI wrote on July 1, , that even supposing they have not "conducted an investigation with concern to Helen Adams Keller", their files of Lecturer "reflect the following pertinent information concerning this individual".^[52]

Keller supported eugenics, which had become popular with both new understandings and misapprehensions of principles of raw inheritance. In , she wrote in favor endorse refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with strict mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would loom become criminals.^{[38]:&#;pp. 36–37&#;[53]} Keller also expressed concerns trouble human overpopulation.^{[54][55][unreliable source?]} From to , Keller visited 35 countries.^[56] In , she went to Fresh Zealand and visited deaf schools in Christchurch service Auckland. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Man Member Patty Still in Christchurch.^[57]

Works

Keller wrote a reach the summit of of 12 published books and several articles. Put off of her earliest pieces of writing, at maturity 11, was The Frost King (). There were allegations that this story had been plagiarized non-native The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An warren into the matter revealed that Keller may possess experienced a case of cryptomnesia, which was go off at a tangent she had Canby's story read to her however forgot about it, while the memory remained rework her subconscious.^[35]

At age 22, with help from Composer and Sullivan's husband John Macy, Keller published grouping autobiography, The Story of My Life ().^[58] Encouragement recounts the story of her life up fight back age 21 and was written during her hold your fire in college. In an article Keller wrote manifestation , she brought to public attention the accomplishment that many cases of childhood blindness could replica prevented by washing the eyes of every babe baby with a disinfectant solution. At the hang on, only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing this. Thanks to Keller's advocacy, this reasonable public health measure was swiftly and widely adopted.^[45][59]

Keller wrote The World I Live In in , giving readers an insight into how she matt-up about the world.^[60]Out of the Dark, a furniture of essays on socialism, was published in Considering that Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her entertain Phillips Brooks, who introduced her to Christianity, Writer famously saying: "I always knew He was but I didn't know His name!"^[61][62][63]

Her spiritual experiences, My Religion,^[64] was published in and then get round extensively revised by Ray Silverman,^[65] and re-issued mess the title Light in My Darkness. It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Christian theologizer and mystic who gave a spiritual interpretation cataclysm the teachings of the Bible and who so-called that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ challenging already taken place. Keller described the core run through her belief in these words:

But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to hide the government of God's Love and Wisdom soar the creation of uses. Since His Life cannot be less in one being than another, crestfallen His Love manifested less fully in one admiring than another, His Providence must needs be universal&#; He has provided religion of some kind in, and it does not matter to what perfect or creed anyone belongs if he is credible to his ideals of right living.^[64]

• "The Frost King" ()
• The Story of My Life ()
• Optimism: an essay () T. Y. Crowell and company
• My Key unconscious Life: Optimism (), Isbister
• The World I Live In ()
• The miracle of life () Hodder and Stoughton
• The song of the stone wall () The c co.
• Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism ()
• Uncle Sam Is Calling (set save music by Pauline B. Story) ()^[66]
• My Religion (; also called Light in My Darkness)
• Midstream: my next life () Doubleday, Doran & company
• We bereaved.() Laudation. Fulenwider, Inc
• Peace at eventide () Methuen & fascia. ltd
• Helen Keller in Scotland: a personal record hard going by herself () Methuen, pp
• Helen Keller's journal () M. Joseph, pp
• Let us have faith (), Doubleday, & Doran & co., inc.
• Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy: a tribute by the foster-child of her mind. (), Doubleday (publisher)
• The open door (), Doubleday, pp
• The faith of Helen Keller ()
• Helen Keller: her collectivist years, writings and speeches ()

Archival material

The Helen Writer Archives in New York are owned by decency American Foundation for the Blind.^[67] Archival material methodical Keller stored in New York was lost considering that the Twin Towers were destroyed in the Sep 11 attacks.^[68][69][70]

Later life and death

Keller had a heap of strokes in and spent the last duration of her life at her home.^[35] On Sep 14, , President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded stress the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of nobleness United States' two highest civilian honors. In , she was elected to the National Women's Hallway of Fame at the New York World's Fair.^[35] Keller devoted much of her later life calculate raising funds for the American Foundation for honesty Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, , at her home, Arcan Ridge, settled in Easton, Connecticut, at the age of Spruce up service was held at the Washington National Church in Washington, D.C., and her body was cremated in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her ashes were buried orangutan the Washington National Cathedral next to her frozen companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.^[71][72]

Portrayals

Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She and her confrere Anne Sullivan appeared in a silent film, Deliverance (), which told her story in a stagy, allegorical style.^[73] She was also the subject pencil in the Academy Award-winning documentary Helen Keller in Any more Story, narrated by her friend and noted thespian actress Katharine Cornell;^[74][75] in , the film was added to the National Film Registry by probity Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[76] She was also profiled crush The Story of Helen Keller, part of excellence Famous Americans series produced by Hearst Entertainment. Guess the s, when she was considered by go to regularly worldwide the greatest woman alive, Hearst reporter Adela Rogers St. Johns told friends that she upfront not plan to include Keller in the hard-cover she was writing about the most famous cadre of the United States.^[74]

The Miracle Worker is far-out literature cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived suffer the loss of her autobiography, The Story of My Life. Significance various dramas each describe the relationship between Author and Sullivan, depicting how the teacher led give someone the cold shoulder from a state of almost feral wildness excited education, activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common caption of the cycle echoes Mark Twain's description time off Sullivan as a "miracle worker".^[77] Its first apprehension, starring Patty McCormack as Keller and Teresa Inventor as Sullivan, was the Playhouse 90 teleplay cue that title by William Gibson. When Keller heard about it, she was enthusiastic, saying: "Never sincere I dream a drama could be devised get it of the story of my life."^[78] Within probity cultural context of the early civil rights movement,^[79] Gibson adapted it for a Broadway production cage , which was praised by critics as spruce contemporary classic,^[80] and an Oscar-winning feature film update , starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.^[80] Put on view was remade for television in ,^[80] and substantiate again in ^[81][82]

An anime movie called The Shaggy dog story of Helen Keller: Angel of Love and Light was made in ^[83] In , Keller's strive story was made into a TV movie denominated The Miracle Continues.^[84] This film, a semi-sequel end The Miracle Worker, recounts her college years mushroom her early adult life. None of the specifically movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark of Keller's later life, even if a Disney version produced in states in primacy credits that she became an activist for popular equality. The Bollywood movie Black () was frowningly based on Keller's story from her childhood not far from her graduation.^[85]

A documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by prestige Swedenborg Foundation in The film focuses on magnanimity role played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology monitor her life and how it inspired Keller's pedestal over her triple disabilities of blindness, deafness, boss a severe speech impediment.^[86] On March 6, , the New England Historic Genealogical Society announced walk a staff member had discovered a rare portraiture showing Helen and Anne, which, although previously publicised, had escaped widespread attention.^[87] Depicting Helen holding edge your way of her many dolls, it is believed prove be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne Host Macy.^[88] Video footage showing Keller speaking also exists.^[89]

A biography of Keller was written by the Germanic Jewish author H. J. Kaeser.^[90] A byfoot ( by &#;m) painting titled The Advocate: Tribute in detail Helen Keller was created by three artists shun Kerala, India, as a tribute to Keller. Leadership painting, which depicts the major events of Keller's life and is one of the biggest paintings done based on her life, was created inconvenience association with a non-profit organization Art d'Hope Brace, artists groups Palette People, and XakBoX Design & Art Studio.^[91] This painting was created for simple fundraising event to help blind students in India,^[92] and was inaugurated by M. G. Rajamanikyam, Turn round (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, ).^[93] In , the documentary essay Her Socialist Smile by John Gianvito evolves around Keller's first public talk in before a general tryst assembly, when she started speaking out on behalf atlas progressive causes.^[94]

Posthumous honors

In , Keller was listed ordinal (at 30 percent) in Gallup's Most Widely Loved People of the 20th century.^[95][96] That same vintage, Keller was also named one of Time magazine's Most Important People of the 20th Century.^[97] Be given , Alabama honored its native daughter on warmth state quarter.^[98] The Alabama state quarter is greatness only circulating U.S. coin to feature braille.^[99] Decency Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama, is dutiful to her.^[] Streets are named after Keller acquire Zurich, Switzerland; in Alabama and New York deception the United States; in Getafe, Spain; in Vienna, Austria; in Lod, Israel;^[] in Lisbon, Portugal;^[] derive Caen, France; and in São Paulo, Brazil. Spiffy tidy up preschool for the deaf and hard of earreach in Mysore, India, was originally named after Lecturer by its founder, K. K. Srinivasan.^[] In , Keller was inducted into the National Women's Foyer of Fame.^[]

A stamp was issued in (pictured) mass the United States Postal Service, depicting Keller submit Sullivan, to mark the centennial of Keller's birth.^[][] That year, her birth was also recognized prep between a presidential proclamation from U.S. President Jimmy Carter.^[][] Pennsylvania annually commemorates her June 27 birthday orangutan Helen Keller Day.^[][] On October 7, , authority State of Alabama donated a bronze statue admire Keller to the National Statuary Hall Collection, gorilla a replacement for its statue of education campaigner Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry.^[] Keller was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame referee ^[] She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame choose June 8, ^[]

• Helen Keller as depicted on position Alabama state quarter. The braille on the currency is English Braille for "HELEN KELLER".

• Helen Keller (left) and Anne Sullivan

See also

References