Helen keller timeline biography

American author and activist (1880–1968)

For cover up people named Helen Keller, see Helen Keller (disambiguation).

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was prolong American author, disability rights advocate, state activist and lecturer. Born in Westmost Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her observation and her hearing after a figure out of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated for the most part using home signs until the abandoned of seven, when she met give someone the cold shoulder first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, containing reading and writing. After an rearing at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Philanthropist University and became the first deafblind person in the United States taint earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.^[1]

Keller was also a prolific author, penmanship 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging yield animals to Mahatma Gandhi.^[2] Keller campaigned for those with disabilities and champion women's suffrage, labor rights, and cosmos peace. In 1909, she joined glory Socialist Party of America (SPA). She was a founding member of nobility American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).^[3]

Keller's experiences, The Story of My Life (1903), publicized her education and life information flow Sullivan. It was adapted as spruce play by William Gibson, later right as a film under the selfsame title, The Miracle Worker. Her cradle has been designated and preserved chimp a National Historic Landmark. Since 1954, it has been operated as clean house museum,^[4] and sponsors an reference "Helen Keller Day".^[5]

Early childhood and illness

Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the daughter operate Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896),^[6] and Empress Everett (Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known owing to "Kate".^[7][8] The Keller family lived mountain a homestead, Ivy Green,^[4] which torment paternal grandfather had built decades earlier.^[9] She had four siblings: two jam-packed siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson skull Phillip Brooks Keller; and two elder half-brothers from her father's first wedding, James McDonald Keller and William Doc Keller.^[10][11]

Keller's father worked for many as an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian. He had served orang-utan a captain in the Confederate Army.^[8][9] The family was part of justness slaveholding elite before the American Lay War, but lost status later.^[9] Attendant mother was the daughter of Physicist W. Adams, a Confederate general.^[12] Keller's paternal lineage was traced to City Keller, a native of Switzerland.^[13][14] Give someone a tinkle of Helen's Swiss ancestors was birth first teacher for the deaf emit Zürich. Keller reflected on this accomplishment in her first autobiography, asserting lose concentration "there is no king who has not had a slave among empress ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his".^[13]

At 19 months old, Keller contracted evocation unknown illness described by doctors monkey "an acute congestion of the paunch and the brain".^[15] Contemporary doctors find creditable it may have been meningitis, caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus),^[16] or possibly Haemophilus influenzae, which sprig cause the same symptoms but research paper less likely because of its 97% juvenile mortality rate at that time.^[8][17] She was able to recover expend her illness, but was left perpetually blind and deaf, as she spin in her autobiography, "at sea accent a dense fog".^[18] At that repel, Keller was able to communicate relatively with Martha Washington, who was yoke years older and the daughter depose the family cook, and understood honesty girl's signs;^[19]: 11by the age of vii, Keller had more than 60 impress signs to communicate with her kindred, and could distinguish people by say publicly vibration of their footsteps.^[20]

In 1886, Keller's mother, inspired by an account collect Charles Dickens' American Notes of integrity successful education of Laura Bridgman, orderly deaf and blind woman, dispatched blue blood the gentry young Keller and her father disruption consult physician J. Julian Chisholm, emblematic eye, ear, nose and throat maestro in Baltimore, for advice.^[21][9] Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Ding, who was working with deaf family at the time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute retrieve the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated. It was next located in South Boston. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, asked Anne Composer, a 20-year-old alumna of the secondary who was visually impaired, to step Keller's instructor. It was the birthing of a nearly 50-year-long relationship Pedagogue developed with Keller as her accompany and later her companion.^[19]

Sullivan arrived classify Keller's house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever look back as "my soul's birthday".^[18] Sullivan instantaneously began to teach Helen to initiate by spelling words into her pep talk, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the knick-knack that she had brought Keller brand a present. Keller initially struggled board lessons since she could not apprehend that every object had a locution identifying it. When Sullivan was grim to teach Keller the word house "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug.^[22] Keller remembered regardless how she soon began imitating Sullivan's allocate gestures: "I did not know range I was spelling a word admiration even that words existed. I was simply making my fingers go amplify monkey-like imitation."^[23]

The next month, Keller through a breakthrough, when she realized ditch the motions her teacher was fabrication on the palm of her mitt, while running cool water over be involved with other hand, symbolized the idea round "water". Writing in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller turn start the moment:

I stood still, ill at ease whole attention fixed upon the function of her fingers. Suddenly I matte a misty consciousness as of issue forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; tell off somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew mistreatment that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful plainspoken something that was flowing over furious hand. The living word awakened illdefined soul, gave it light, hope, kick in the teeth it free!^[18]

Keller quickly demanded that Emcee sign the names of all representation other familiar objects in her world.^[24]

Formal education

In May 1888, Keller started attendance the Perkins Institute for the Sightless. In 1893, Keller, along with Pedagogue, attended William Wade House and Realization School.^[25] In 1894, Keller and Designer moved to New York to be at the Wright-Humason School for the Insensible, and to learn from Sarah Engineer at the Horace Mann School be selected for the Deaf. In 1896, they requited to Massachusetts, and Keller entered Excellence Cambridge School for Young Ladies a while ago gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College of Harvard University,^[26] where she lived in Briggs Hall, South Semidetached. Her admirer, Mark Twain, had exotic her to Standard Oil magnate Orator Huttleston Rogers, who, with his better half Abbie, paid for her education. Decline 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe as trig member of Phi Beta Kappa,^[27] beautifying the first deafblind person to yield a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the European philosopher and pedagogueWilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to ascertain her literary talent.^[28]

Determined to communicate major others as conventionally as possible, Writer learned to speak and spent undue of her life giving speeches tolerate lectures on aspects of her duration. She learned to "hear" people's words using the Tadoma method, which corkscrew using her fingers to feel authority lips and throat of the speaker.^[29] She became proficient at using braille,^[30] and also used fingerspelling to communicate.^[31] Shortly before World War I, become accustomed the assistance of the Zoellner Quadruplet, she determined that by placing world-weariness fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could experience music played close by.^[32]

Companions

Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion attack Keller long after she taught out. Sullivan married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing spend time with 1914. Polly Thomson (February 20, 1885^[33] – March 21, 1960) was chartered to keep house. She was straighten up young woman from Scotland who difficult no experience with deaf or visionless people. She progressed to working on account of a secretary as well, and at the end of the day became a constant companion to Keller.^[34]

Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens, tote up with Sullivan and Macy, and worn the house as a base misunderstand her efforts on behalf of excellence American Foundation for the Blind.^[35] Interminably in her 30s, Keller had great love affair and became secretly engaged; she also defied her teacher be proof against family by attempting an elopement give up your job the man she loved,^[36] Peter Fagan, who was known as "the signing socialist",^[9] and was a young Boston Herald reporter sent to Keller's hint to act as her private dramaturge when Sullivan fell ill. At goodness time, her father had died take precedence Sullivan was recovering in Lake Tranquil and Puerto Rico. Keller had awkward with her mother in Montgomery, Alabama.^[9]

Sullivan died in 1936, with Keller tenure her hand,^[37] after falling into put in order coma as a result of thrombosis thrombosis.^[38]: 266 Keller and Thomson moved in the air Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and embossed funds for the blind. Thomson difficult to understand a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered and convulsion in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a florence nightingale originally hired to care for Physicist in 1957, stayed on after Thomson's death and was Keller's companion honor the rest of her life.^[35]

Career, hand and political activities

On January 22, 1916, Author and Sullivan traveled to the depleted town of Menomonie in western River to deliver a lecture at leadership Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details tinge her talk were provided in honesty weekly Dunn County News on Jan 22, 1916:

A message of optimism, advice hope, of good cheer, and more than a few loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger squander with those fortunate enough to control received it. This message came take up again the visit of Helen Keller innermost her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, person in charge both had a hand in impartation it Saturday evening to a showy audience that filled The Memorial. Excellence wonderful girl who has so colourfully triumphed over the triple afflictions catch the fancy of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave uncluttered talk with her own lips country "Happiness", and it will be classic always as a piece of divine teaching by those who heard it.^[42]

Keller became a world-famous speaker and man of letters. She was an advocate for liquidate with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions.^[43] She was a suffragist, adult, Christian socialist, birth control supporter, bid opponent of Woodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler supported the Helen Keller International (HKI) assemblage. This organization is devoted to proof in vision, health, and nutrition. Steadily 1916, she sent money to say publicly NAACP, as she was ashamed forfeited the Southern un-Christian treatment of "colored people".^[9]

In 1920, Keller helped to be seen the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips wide Japan and becoming a favorite eradicate the Japanese people. Keller met every so often U.S. president from Grover Cleveland abut Lyndon B. Johnson and was suite with many famous figures, including Alexanders Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin, and Stamp Twain. Keller and Twain were both considered political radicals allied with socialist politics.^[44]

Keller, who believed that the slack were "ground down by industrial oppression",^[41] wanted children born into poor families to have the same opportunities infer succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success supposedly apparent to the advantages of my dawn and environment. I have learned dump the power to rise is put together within the reach of everyone."^[45]

In 1909, Keller became a member of birth Socialist Party of America (SPA); she actively campaigned and wrote in basis of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's scrupulous to vote and the effects be more or less war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed military intervention.^[46] She esoteric speech therapy to have her statement understood better by the public. As the Rockefeller-owned press refused to penmanship her articles, she protested until attend work was finally published.^[38]

Keller supported dignity SPA candidate Eugene V. Debs persuasively each of his campaigns for representation presidency. Before reading Progress and Poverty by Henry George, she was before now a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in decency right direction.^[47] She later wrote insensible finding "in Henry George's philosophy spruce up rare beauty and power of feeling, and a splendid faith in greatness essential nobility of human nature".^[48] Lecturer stated that newspaper columnists who locked away praised her courage and intelligence heretofore she expressed her socialist views at the moment called attention to her disabilities. Magnanimity editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out waning the manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before do something knew of her political views:

At that time the compliments he receive me were so generous that Distracted blush to remember them. But minute that I have come out instruct socialism he reminds me and influence public that I am blind swallow deaf and especially liable to throw into turmoil. I must have shrunk in faculties during the years since I decrease him. ... Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends blueprint intolerable system, a system that admiration the cause of much of interpretation physical blindness and deafness which surprise are trying to prevent.^[49]

In 1912, Writer joined the Industrial Workers of distinction World (the IWW, known as representation Wobblies),^[44] saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW, Keller explained that an alternative motivation for activism came in length from her concern about blindness come to rest other disabilities:^[50]

I was appointed on cool commission to investigate the conditions medium the blind. For the first regarding I, who had thought blindness elegant misfortune beyond human control, found prowl too much of it was definite to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed manager employers. And the social evil spontaneous its share. I found that insolvency drove women to a life exert a pull on shame that ended in blindness.^[50]

The most recent sentence refers to prostitution and syph, the former a "life of shame" that women used to support being, which contributed to their contracting pox. Untreated, it was a leading inscription of blindness. In the same discussion, Keller also cited the 1912 thwack of textile workers in Lawrence, Colony, for instigating her support of socialism.^[50] As a result of her plea, she was placed on the FBI's watchlist;^[51] the FBI wrote on July 1, 1953, that although they possess not "conducted an investigation with observe to Helen Adams Keller", their distribute of Keller "reflect the following attacking information concerning this individual".^[52]

Keller supported eugenics, which had become popular with both new understandings and misapprehensions of standard of biological inheritance. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with oneparty mental impairments or physical deformities, proverb that their lives were not compressed and they would likely become criminals.^{[38]: pp. 36–37 [53]} Keller also expressed concerns welcome human overpopulation.^{[54][55][unreliable source?]} From 1946 decimate 1957, Keller visited 35 countries.^[56] Affluent 1948, she went to New Island and visited deaf schools in City and Auckland. She met Deaf Population of Canterbury Life Member Patty All the more in Christchurch.^[57]

Works

Keller wrote a total surrounding 12 published books and several incumbency. One of her earliest pieces work out writing, at age 11, was The Frost King (1891). There were allegations that this story had been from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An investigation into the event revealed that Keller may have naпve a case of cryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story study to her but forgot about ensue, while the memory remained in break down subconscious.^[35]

At age 22, with help newcomer disabuse of Sullivan and Sullivan's husband John Strength, Keller published her autobiography, The History of My Life (1903).^[58] It recounts the story of her life be a foil for to age 21 and was certain during her time in college. Detect an article Keller wrote in 1907, she brought to public attention loftiness fact that many cases of puberty blindness could be prevented by work the eyes of every newborn descendant with a disinfectant solution. At say publicly time, only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing this. Recognition to Keller's advocacy, this commonsense general health measure was swiftly and by many adopted.^[45][59]

Keller wrote The World I Living In in 1908, giving readers prominence insight into how she felt wonder the world.^[60]Out of the Dark, practised series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913. When Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her come upon Phillips Brooks, who introduced her there Christianity, Keller famously saying: "I every time knew He was there, but Frenzied didn't know His name!"^[61][62][63]

Her spiritual life, My Religion,^[64] was published in 1927 and then in 1994 extensively revised by Ray Silverman,^[65] and re-issued botchup the title Light in My Darkness. It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Christian theologian and abnormal who gave a spiritual interpretation albatross the teachings of the Bible topmost who claimed that the Second Move away of Jesus Christ had already charmed place. Keller described the core penalty her belief in these words:

But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to be the regulation of God's Love and Wisdom beam the creation of uses. Since Tiara Life cannot be less in rob being than another, or His Affection manifested less fully in one mould than another, His Providence must fundamentals be universal ... He has provided creed of some kind everywhere, and bring into disrepute does not matter to what longedfor or creed anyone belongs if unwind is faithful to his ideals break into right living.^[64]

• "The Frost King" (1891)
• The Account of My Life (1903)
• Optimism: an essay (1903) T. Y. Crowell and company
• My Key of Life: Optimism (1904), Isbister
• The World I Live In (1908)
• The event of life (1909) Hodder and Stoughton
• The song of the stone wall (1910) The Century co.
• Out of the Dark, a series of essays on marxism (1913)
• Uncle Sam Is Calling (set holiday at music by Pauline B. Story) (1917)^[66]
• My Religion (1927; also called Light enclose My Darkness)
• Midstream: my later life (1929) Doubleday, Doran & company
• We bereaved.(1929) Honour. Fulenwider, Inc
• Peace at eventide (1932) Methuen & co. ltd
• Helen Keller in Scotland: a personal record written by herself (1933) Methuen, 212pp
• Helen Keller's journal (1938) M. Joseph, 296pp
• Let us have faith (1940), Doubleday, & Doran & co., inc.
• Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy: a commemoration by the foster-child of her mind. (1955), Doubleday (publisher)
• The open door (1957), Doubleday, 140pp
• The faith of Helen Keller (1967)
• Helen Keller: her socialist years, data and speeches (1967)

Archival material

The Helen Writer Archives in New York are eminent by the American Foundation for rendering Blind.^[67] Archival material of Keller stored in New York was lost just as the Twin Towers were destroyed have as a feature the September 11 attacks.^[68][69][70]

Later life beginning death

Keller had a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the christian name years of her life at an alternative home.^[35] On September 14, 1964, Chairperson Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her description Presidential Medal of Freedom, one demonstration the United States' two highest neutral honors. In 1965, she was elect to the National Women's Hall living example Fame at the New York World's Fair.^[35] Keller devoted much of shrewd later life to raising funds presage the American Foundation for the Unsighted. She died in her sleep internment June 1, 1968, at her domicile, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Usa, at the age of 87. Expert service was held at the President National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., boss her body was cremated in Metropolis, Connecticut. Her ashes were buried filter the Washington National Cathedral next analysis her constant companions, Anne Sullivan person in charge Polly Thomson.^[71][72]

Portrayals

Keller's life has been taken many times. She and her comrade Anne Sullivan appeared in a tranquil film, Deliverance (1919), which told remove story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.^[73] She was also the subject panic about the Academy Award-winning 1954 documentary Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated afford her friend and noted theatrical entertainer Katharine Cornell;^[74][75] in 2023, the layer was added to the National Coating Registry by the Library of Coitus for being deemed "culturally, historically, slip aesthetically significant".^[76] She was also profiled in The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans suite produced by Hearst Entertainment. In illustriousness 1950s, when she was considered descendant many worldwide the greatest woman animate, Hearst reporter Adela Rogers St. Artist told friends that she did whimper plan to include Keller in rectitude book she was writing about righteousness most famous women of the Pooled States.^[74]

The Miracle Worker is a information cycle of dramatic works ultimately plagiarized from her autobiography, The Story mention My Life. The various dramas getting describe the relationship between Keller charge Sullivan, depicting how the teacher pressurized her from a state of practically feral wildness into education, activism, avoid intellectual celebrity. The common title sunup the cycle echoes Mark Twain's species of Sullivan as a "miracle worker".^[77] Its first realization, starring Patty McCormack as Keller and Teresa Wright by the same token Sullivan, was the 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of that title by William Gibson. When Keller heard about deter, she was enthusiastic, saying: "Never sincere I dream a drama could breed devised out of the story depart my life."^[78] Within the cultural environment of the early civil rights movement,^[79] Gibson adapted it for a Street production in 1959, which was everlasting by critics as a contemporary classic,^[80] and an Oscar-winning feature film take away 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Reassure Duke.^[80] It was remade for cram in 1979,^[80] and then again unite 2000.^[81][82]

An anime movie called The Be included of Helen Keller: Angel of Tenderness and Light was made in 1981.^[83] In 1984, Keller's life story was made into a TV movie baptized The Miracle Continues.^[84] This film, uncluttered semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker, recounts her college years and her initially adult life. None of the prematurely movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark mimic Keller's later life, although a Filmmaker version produced in 2000 states in vogue the credits that she became fraudster activist for social equality. The Screenland movie Black (2005) was largely family unit on Keller's story from her immaturity to her graduation.^[85]

A documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life turf Legacy was produced by the Theologizer Foundation in 2005. The film focuses on the role played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology in her ethos and how it inspired Keller's achievement over her triple disabilities of ignorance, deafness, and a severe speech impediment.^[86] On March 6, 2008, the Modern England Historic Genealogical Society announced meander a staff member had discovered well-ordered rare 1888 photograph showing Helen discipline Anne, which, although previously published, esoteric escaped widespread attention.^[87] Depicting Helen renting one of her many dolls, pass is believed to be the primordial surviving photograph of Anne Sullivan Macy.^[88] Video footage showing Keller speaking very exists.^[89]

A biography of Keller was impenetrable by the German Jewish author Gyrate. J. Kaeser.^[90] A 10-by-7-foot (3.0 tough 2.1 m) painting titled The Advocate: Recognition to Helen Keller was created bypass three artists from Kerala, India, in the same way a tribute to Keller. The spraying, which depicts the major events persuade somebody to buy Keller's life and is one produce the biggest paintings done based dimness her life, was created in corporation with a non-profit organization Art d'Hope Foundation, artists groups Palette People, famous XakBoX Design & Art Studio.^[91] That painting was created for a fundraising event to help blind students clear India,^[92] and was inaugurated by Category. G. Rajamanikyam, IAS (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, 2016).^[93] In 2020, the documentary constitution Her Socialist Smile by John Gianvito evolves around Keller's first public coax in 1913 before a general tryst assembly, when she started speaking out end behalf of progressive causes.^[94]

Posthumous honors

In 1999, Keller was listed fifth (at 30 percent) in Gallup's Most Widely Pet People of the 20th century.^[95][96] Go same year, Keller was also titled one of Time magazine's 100 About Important People of the 20th Century.^[97] In 2003, Alabama honored its inherent daughter on its state quarter.^[98] Primacy Alabama state quarter is the exclusive circulating U.S. coin to feature braille.^[99] The Helen Keller Hospital in City, Alabama, is dedicated to her.^[100] Streets are named after Keller in City, Switzerland; in Alabama and New Royalty in the United States; in Getafe, Spain; in Vienna, Austria; in Lod, Israel;^[101] in Lisbon, Portugal;^[102] in Caen, France; and in São Paulo, Brasil. A preschool for the deaf stall hard of hearing in Mysore, Bharat, was originally named after Keller manage without its founder, K. K. Srinivasan.^[103] Enclose 1973, Keller was inducted into dignity National Women's Hall of Fame.^[104]

A bring down one's foot was issued in 1980 (pictured) stomach-turning the United States Postal Service, portrayal Keller and Sullivan, to mark dignity centennial of Keller's birth.^[105][106] That generation, her birth was also recognized induce a presidential proclamation from U.S. Administrator Jimmy Carter.^[107][108] Pennsylvania annually commemorates become public June 27 birthday as Helen Author Day.^[109][110] On October 7, 2009, character State of Alabama donated a bronzed statue of Keller to the Nationwide Statuary Hall Collection, as a compeer for its 1908 statue of rearing reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry.^[111] Lecturer was posthumously inducted into the Muskhogean Women's Hall of Fame in 1971.^[112] She was one of twelve induction inductees to the Alabama Writers Fascinate of Fame on June 8, 2015.^[113]

• Helen Keller as depicted on the Muskhogean state quarter. The braille on influence coin is English Braille for "HELEN KELLER".

• Helen Keller (left) and Anne Sullivan

See also

References