Helen Keller’s story is powerful enough to inspire anyone with some form of physical disability not to give up on themselves and their dreams. Keller is famous for being the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree. Struck deaf and blind by brain fever when she was only two years old, Keller defied all odds to become an internationally renowned icon, particularly in the field of education.
She was a prolific author, political activist and lecturer. More than half a century has passed since Hellen’s passing, but her legacy lives on and continues to attract attention from time to time.
Who is Helen Keller?
On June 27, 1880, at a farm in Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, a couple named Arthur H. Keller and Katherine Adams Keller welcomed their first daughter, Helen Adams Keller, into the world. She was born perfectly healthy with all her sensory organs intact. Keller was raised alongside her two siblings Mildred Campbell and Phillip Brooks Keller. From her father’s previous marriage, Helen was the half-sister of James and William Simpson Keller.
The Keller family was not particularly wealthy, Patriarch Arthur Keller was also an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and after the war ended he was appointed editor of the local weekly newspaper The North Alabamian. The family’s main source of income was its cotton plantation.
Hellen Keller developed quite quickly, beginning to talk when she was just 6 months old and walking before she was a year old. Unfortunately, her life took a tragic turn in 1882 when, at just 19 months old, Hellen was struck by a fever that left her blind and deaf. The family doctor diagnosed him with “brain fever”. Keller’s body temperature rose to alarming levels and doctors later suspected it was scarlet fever or meningitis.
His parents noticed the effects of the disease when Keller no longer responded to dinner bells and did not flinch when a finger was waved across his face. The illness left the young Keller traumatized and she often expressed her emotions in extreme ways, throwing tantrums at her parents and laughing uncontrollably when excited.
She was very close to a certain Martha Washington, the young girl in the kitchen family. Together with Martha, Keller developed speech signs and by the age of 6 she had developed about 60 signs to communicate with her family. Keller’s parents became so worried about her illness that they desperately searched for answers and a better life for their daughter.
They were recommended to Alexander Graham Bell, the founder of the telephone who at the time (1886) was working with deaf and blind people. Bell sent them to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts, where Anne Sullivan was assigned to help Keller.
Anne Sulivan would come to play a crucial role in Hellen Keller, who experienced her first bouts of frustration and helped her reach an unprecedented level. Anne Sullivan dedicated the rest of her life to Keller’s education.
Facts about his education and teaching
• A year in her home of tutorials with AnneSullivan, Helen Keller began her formal education in 1888 at the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where she learned to read Braille. She also attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and the Horace Mann School for the Deaf where she took speech lessons.
• Helen Keller briefly attended the CambridgeBefore her learning abilities, School for Young Ladies prompted admirer Mark Twain to offer her to attend Radcliffe College at Harvard University, where she graduated in 1904, at the age of 24, becoming the first blind person to graduate from college. Anne Sullivan sat by his side throughout his classes, helping him interpret the lessons.
• In college, Helen Keller mastered several methods of communication, including Braille, finger typing and spelling, and tactile reading.
• With the help of John Macy, Anne Sulivan’s husband, Helen Keller wrote her first book, an autobiography called The Story of My Life which detailed her life from infancy until she was 21 years old. She would go on to write 12 books in total.
• After graduating from college, Keller began giving talks often sharing her experience with her disability, which inspired many people. She went to many schools for the deaf and quickly became a social activist for people with disabilities. At one point, she testified before Congress to advocate for the welfare of the blind.
Later life and death
Helen Keller has dedicated her entire life to improving the lives of people with disabilities. Her works gained international acclaim and as a result, she was amply rewarded for her achievements. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Her efforts have taken her to more than 35 countries. She has streets in France, Spain and Israel named after her. Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961, and on June 1, 1968, Helen Keller died peacefully in her sleep. Keller received numerous posthumous honors. In 1971 and 2015, she was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame and the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.