Writer and lecturer, born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA. She became blind and deaf at 19 months, and in a breakthrough made famous by subsequent popular dramatizations, was taught to speak, read, and write when she was seven years old by Anne Mansfield Sullivan (later Mrs Macy), known as Teacher to Keller and the Miracle Worker among the general public. Sullivan remained Keller's interpreter and companion until her death in 1936. Keller received communications by lipreading, braille, and finger-spelling using a manual alphabet, and she expressed herself through finger-spelling, typewriting, and speech. She achieved international celebrity as a child, graduated from Radcliffe College (1904), and as an adult she lectured and published widely on both her own experiences and political, social, and educational issues. She promoted Socialism and women's suffrage, raised funds for the American Foundation for the Blind, and remains a model of achievement among the severely disabled. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1902), was dramatized by William Gibson in The Miracle Worker (1959, Pulitzer, filmed 1962).
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was a deafblind American author, activist and lecturer.
| Helen Adams Keller | |
|---|---|
| Deaf-blind American author, activist, and lecturer | |
| Born |
June 27, 1880 Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA |
| Died |
June 1, 1968 Easton, Connecticut, USA |
Biography
Childhood
Helen Keller was born at an estate called Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to parents Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller. The Keller family originates from Germany. In 1886, her mother Kate Keller was inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deaf blind child, Laura Bridgman, and traveled to a specialist doctor in Baltimore for advice. The school delegated teacher and former student, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Helen's teacher.
Sullivan got permission from Helen's father to isolate the girl from the rest of the family in a little house in their garden. In 1890, ten-year-old Helen Keller was introduced to the story of Ragnhild Kåta - a deaf blind Norwegian girl who had learned to speak. Anne was able to teach Helen to speak using the Tadoma method (touching the lips and throat of others as they speak) combined with "fingerspelling" alphabetical characters on the palm of Helen's hand. Later, Keller would also learn to read English, French, German, Greek, and Latin in Braille.
Helen's pre-teenaged years were marred by allegations that her story, The Frost King (written in 1891) had been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby.
Education
In 1888, Helen attended the Perkins School for the Blind. In 1894, Helen and Anne moved to New York City to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1904 at the age of 24, Helen graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude, becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate from a college.
Political activities
Helen went on to become a world famous speaker and author. In 1915 she founded Helen Keller International, a non-profit organization for preventing blindness. Helen and Anne Sullivan traveled all over the world to over 39 countries, and made several trips to Japan, becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Helen Keller met every U.S. President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B.
Helen Keller was a member of the Socialist Party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working classes from 1909 to 1921.
Newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views:
Helen Keller also joined the famous labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), in 1912 after she felt that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog." Helen Keller wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In "Why I Became an IWW," Helen wrote that her motivation for activism came in part due to her concern about blindness and other disabilities:
Introduction of the Akita dog to America
When Keller visited Akita Prefecture in Japan in July 1937, she inquired about Hachiko, the famed Akita dog that had died in 1935.
Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita to America through Kamikaze-go and his successor, Kenzan-go.
Keller wrote in the Akita Journal:
(sources: , , )
Writings
Keller's book, Light in my Darkness was published in 1960. It includes letters that Helen wrote and the story of her life up to age 21.
Honors and later life
On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Helen Keller the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' top two highest civilian honors.
Keller devoted much of her later life to raise funds for the American Foundation for the Blind.
In 2003, the state of Alabama honored Keller — a native of the state — on its state quarter. The Helen Keller Hospital is also dedicated to her.
Portrayals of Helen Keller
A silent film, Deliverance (not to be mistaken for the other, much later and more famous movie Deliverance which is unrelated to Keller) first told Keller's story. The Miracle Worker, a play about how Helen Keller learned to communicate, was made into a movie three times. The 1962 version of the movie won Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Anne Bancroft who played Sullivan and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Patty Duke who played Keller. It also became a 1979 TV movie, this time with Patty Duke playing Anne Sullivan and Melissa Gilbert playing Helen Keller , as well as a 2000 TV movie in which Keller was protrayed by Hallie Kate Eisenberg.
The 1984 TV movie about Helen Keller's life is The Miracle Continues. None of the early movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark of Helen's later life, although the The Walt Disney Company version produced in 2000 states in the credits that Helen became an activist for social equality.
The Hindi movie Black released in 2005 was largely based on Keller's story, from her childhood to her graduation.
A new documentary Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced and recently released by The Swedenborg Foundation (2005). 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.
Helen the Baby Fox, a 2006 Japanese film, features a deaf and blind fox cub named after Keller.
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