Helen
Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on 27th June, 1880.
Her father was a newspaper reporter who had fought in the Confederate
Army during the American Civil War.
At
19 months she suffered "an acute congestion of the stomach and
brain (probably scarlet fever) which left her deaf and blind. As a
child she was taken to see Alexander G. Bell.
He suggested that the family should contact the Perkins Institute
for the Blind in Boston. In 1886 the Perkins
Institute provided Keller with the teacher Anne Sullivan. The 21 year
old Sullivan worked out an alphabet by which she spelled out words
on Helen's hand. Gradually Keller was able to connect words with objects.
Sullivan's teaching skills and Keller's abilities, enabled her at
the age of 16 to pass the admissions examinations for Radcliffe College.
While at college she wrote the first volume of her autobiography,
The Story of My Life. It was published serially in the Ladies'
Home Journal and, in 1902, as a book. By the time she had
graduated in 1904 she had mastered five languages.
While
at college she developed a strong interest in women's
rights and became a militant campaigner in favour of universal
suffrage. She also became friends with several notable public figures
including John Greenleaf Whittier,
Oliver Wendell Holmes and William
Dean Howells.
Keller's
political views were influenced by conversations she had with John
Macy (Anne Sullivan's husband) and reading New Worlds for Old
by H. G. Wells.
In
1909 Keller became a socialist and was
active in various campaigns including those in favour of birth control,
trade unionism and against child
labour and capital punishment.
A
book on Keller's socialist views, Out of
the Dark, was published in 1913. She later wrote "I
had once believed that we are all masters of our fate - that we could
mould our lives into any form we pleased. I had overcome deafness
and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone
could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life's
struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned
that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about.
I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth
and environment. Now, however, I learned that the power to rise in
the world is not within the reach of everyone."
As a pacifist she was opposed to the
United States becoming involved in the
First World War. In 1918 Keller starred in an
autobiographical film, Deliverance,
in an attempt to spread "a message of courage, a message of a
brighter, happier future for all men".
Throughout her life Keller lectured and wrote on the need to increase
the help given to the underprivileged. In later life she became particularly
concerned with black civil rights. She wrote several books including
Optimism (1903), The
World I Live In (1908), The Song
of the Stone Wall (1910) and Midstream
(1929).
Keller's
childhood education was depicted in William Gibson's play The
Miracle Worker, which won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1960. Helen Keller died in Westport, Connecticut, on
1st June, 1968.
Helen
Keller met President Dwight
D. Eisenhower in 1953.
(1)
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (1902)
In the dreary month of February, came the illness which closed
my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new
born baby. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain.
The doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however, the
fever left me as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. There was
great rejoicing in the family that morning, but no one not even the
doctor, knew that I should never see or hear again.
I fancy
I still have confused recollections of that illness. I especially
remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in
my waking hours of fret and pain, and the agony and bewilderment with
which I awoke after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so dry
and hot, to the wall, away from the once-loved light, which came to
me dim and yet more dim each day. But, except for these fleeting memories,
if, indeed, they be memories, it all seems very unreal
like a nightmare. Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness
that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until
she came - my teacher - who was to set my spirit free. But during
the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad,
green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness
that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, "the
day is ours, and what the day has shown."
(2)
In her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Helen Keller explained
how Anne Sullivan taught her how to
read.
We walked
down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the
honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water
and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream
gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first
slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon
the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness
as of something forgotten - a thrill of returning thought;
and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then
that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that
was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave
it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is
true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left
the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name
gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object
which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw
everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering
the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the
hearth and
picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my
eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the
first time I felt repentance and sorrow.
I learned
a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were;
but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them
- words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's
rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier
child than r was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful
day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time
longed for a new day to come.
(3)
Max Eastman, wrote about Helen Keller in
his book, Love and Revolution (1965)
The gleam of true, courageous and unaffected joy in living that
shone out of her gray-blue eyes. Her face was round; she was a round-limbed
girl, perpetually young in her bearing, as though her limitations
had made it easy instead of hard to grow older.
(4)
When Fred Warren
was arrested and imprisoned for offering a reward for the arrest of
William S. Taylor, the former governor
of Kentucky, Helen Keller was one of those who campaigned for his
release. She wrote about the case in the socialist journal, Appeal
to Reason (24th December, 1910)
The more I study Mr. Warren's case in the light of the United States
constitution, which I have under my fingers, the more I am persuaded
either that I do not understand, or that the judges do not. To what
twistings, turnings and dark interpretation must the judges of the
circuit court be driven in order to send Mr. warren to prison! As
I understand it, a federal law defining the kind of matter which it
is a crime to mail has been stretched to cover his act. What was the
act? The offer of a reward was printed on the outside of envelopes
mailed from Girard by Mr. Warren. This was construed as threatening
because it was an encouragement to others to kidnap a man under indictment.
Several years ago three officers of the Western Federation of Miners
were indicted for a murder committed in Idaho. They were in Colorado,
and the governor of that state did not extradite them. They were kidnapped
and brought to an Idaho prison. They applied to the supreme court
for a writ of habeas corpus, on the ground that they were illegally
held because they had been illegally captured. The supreme court replied:
"Even if it be true that the arrest and deportation of Pettibone,
Moyer and Hayward from Colorado was by fraud and connivance to which
the governor of Colorado was a party, this does not make out a case
of violation of the rights of the appellants under the constitution
and the laws of the United States."
One need not be a Socialist to realize the significance, the gravity,
not of Mr. Warren's offense, but of the offense of the judges against
the constitution, and against democratic rights. It is provided that
"congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or
of the press." Surely this means that we are free to print and
mail any innocent matter. What Mr. Warren printed and mailed had been
established by the supreme court as innocent. What beam was in the
eye of the honorable judges of the supreme court? Or what mote was
in the eye of the justices of the circuit courts?
It has been my duty, my life-work to study physical blindness, its
causes and its prevention. I learn that our physicians are making
great progress in the cure and the prevention of blindness. What surgery
of politics, what antiseptic of common sense and right thinking, shall
be applied to cure the blindness of the people, who are the court
of last resort?
(5)
Helen Keller, letter to a friend in England (1911)
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean?
It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed,
autocrats, We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
You ask for votes for
women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great
Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the
40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves
from this injustice?
(6)
Helen Keller, introduction to a book of poems by Arturo
Giovannitti.
No one has ever given me a good reason why we should obey unjust
laws. When a government depends for "law and order" upon
the militia and the police, its mission in the world is nearly finished.
We believe, at least we hope, that our capitalist government is near
its end. We wish to hasten its end. I am sure this book will go on
its way thrilling to new courage those who fight for freedom. It will
move some to think and keep them glad that they have thought.
(7)
Helen Keller, Midstream (1929)
I had once believed that we are all masters of our fate - that
we could mould our lives into any form we pleased ... I had overcome
deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that
anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into
life's struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned
that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about.
I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth
and environment ... Now, however, I learned that the power to rise
in the world is not within the reach of everyone.
(8)
Alden Whitman, New York
Times (2nd June, 1968)
In 1909 she (Helen Keller) joined the Socialist party in Massachusetts.
For many years she was an active member, writing incisive articles
in defense of Socialism, lecturing for the party, supporting trade
unions and strikes and opposing American entry into World War I. She
was among those Socialists who welcomed the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia in 1917.
Although
Miss Keller's Socialist activities diminished after 1921, when she
decided that her chief life work was to raise funds for the American
Foundation for the Blind, she was always responsive to Socialist and
Communist appeals for help in causes involving oppression or exploitation
of labor. As late as 1957 she sent a warm greeting to Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn, the Communist leader, then in jail on charges of violating
the Smith Act.
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