Wisdom Wednesdays: Helen Keller – American Activist for the Visually and Hearing Impaired

Helen Keller was a fierce advocate for the visually and hearing impaired. She also embraced causes such as: anti-child labour legislation, birth control advocacy, anti-capital punishment legislation, and adopted a pro-suffrage stance. When Keller was about 19 months old she contracted an illness, possibly scarlet fever, which left her blind and deaf. To many these would be substantial barriers, but Keller lived a very accomplished life with the assistance of Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson. During Keller’s life, she traveled to Great Britain, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, France, Israel, Iceland and Scandinavia. She was welcomed by many governments.

Name: Helen Keller

Birth Date: June 1880 – June 1968

Job Functions: Writer and Activist

Known For: Advocated for the visually and hearing impaired

Mentor: Anne Sullivan

10 Things you May Not Know about Helen Keller

1. When Helen was almost seven years old, Anne Sullivan held one of the child’s hands in water, while she wrote W-A-T-E-R in the other hand. After a while Helen figured out that the thing that was flowing through her hand was W-A-T-E-R. Up to that point in Helen’s life she had been left without instruction and she often acted up.
2. Within three months Helen learned the alphabet and basic spelling using that innovative technique. And by the following year she learned to read Braille.
3. Helen Keller wrote articles about the need for work opportunities for the blind, which was published in Ladies Home Journal. The articles were serialized as The Story of My Life.
4. She was instrumental in establishing the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind.
5. Despite the shock and disapproval of her family, Keller wrote in support of equal rights for black Americans, and donated money to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
6. Her advocacy work for the blind and deaf was responsible for the inclusion of the blind as recipients of federal aid in the Social Security Act of 1935.
7. She became very good friends with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and she pressured the president to authorize funds for recorded books to be made by the Library of Congress.
8. During the war she visited many wounded soldiers at military hospitals.
9. With the aid of caregivers, she gave many presentations and wrote many books, which included The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, Optimism, Out of the Dark, My Religion and Midstream: My Later Life.
10. Because of her unique accomplishments, Mark Twain called her, “The greatest woman since Joan of Arc.” Twain and Keller corresponded for many years.

Helen Keller was both blind and deaf due to an illness, but that didn’t stop her, she accomplished much more that many people without disabilities. She didn’t succeed alone and she couldn’t succeed alone, but her teacher and mentor Anne Sullivan played a critical role in her success. Keller was also very resourceful. When royalties from her books were dwindling she would go on the lecture circuit. Her audience and readers preferred when she talked and wrote about herself, instead of politics.

Have you read?

Wisdom of Life: St. Joan of Arc, Military Leader and Saint

What can we learn from Helen Keller?

We can accomplish more than we think we can, and no one ever succeeds alone. Work with others to create a greater good.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation?

Works Cited/Referenced

Dictionary of Women Worldwide

American National Biography

Women in World History

 Helen Keller (Scholastic Biography) Helen Keller: Courage In The Dark The Story of My Life Who Was Helen Keller? The Story of My Life The World I Live In and Optimism: A Collection of Essays (Dover Books on Literature & Drama) I am Helen Keller (Ordinary People Change the World) Helen Keller: A photographic story of a life (DK Biography)