Helen Keller(1880 — 1968)
Helen Keller
États-Unis
8 min read
Deaf-blind since the age of 19 months, Helen Keller learned to communicate thanks to her teacher Anne Sullivan and became a writer and activist. She devoted her life to defending the rights of people with disabilities and women.
Famous Quotes
« Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. »
« Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. »
Key Facts
- 1882: loses her sight and hearing at 19 months following an illness
- 1887: Anne Sullivan becomes her teacher and teaches her to communicate through touch
- 1904: graduates from Radcliffe College, the first deaf-blind person to earn a university degree
- 1903: publishes her autobiography *The Story of My Life*
- 1920: co-founds the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
Works & Achievements
Autobiography written at age twenty-two, tracing her childhood, her illness, and her relationship with Anne Sullivan. Translated into more than fifty languages, it is one of the most widely read works on disability and resilience.
A short philosophical essay in which Helen Keller develops her conviction that hope and human will can triumph over any adversity, including physical.
A collection of essays in which she describes with precision how she perceives the world through touch, smell, and vibration. A foundational text for understanding non-visual sensory perception.
A collection of political writings in which Helen Keller champions socialism, workers' rights, and women's suffrage, revealing that she was far more than an inspirational figure.
An autobiographical sequel covering her adult life, her political commitments, and her travels around the world as an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
A biographical tribute to Anne Sullivan, who died in 1936, tracing their unique relationship of more than fifty years and the decisive influence of the teacher on every aspect of Helen's life.
Anecdotes
In April 1887, Anne Sullivan led young Helen, then seven years old, to a water pump in the family garden. She spelled the word 'water' into the child's hand as the water flowed over her fingers. In that instant, Helen suddenly understood that every thing has a name — she ran to touch all the objects around her to learn their words. This moment remains one of the most celebrated scenes in the history of education.
In 1904, Helen Keller earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College (Harvard), becoming the first deaf-blind person ever to achieve such an academic credential. Throughout her studies, Anne Sullivan sat beside her and spelled lectures into her hand. Exams were written in Braille, and her professors consistently praised the quality of her essays.
Helen Keller became a committed political activist, joining the Socialist Party of America in 1909 and co-founding the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. When journalists who had once praised her turned critical of her political views, she replied with characteristic wit that those same journalists had found her ideas "brilliant" before they knew she was a socialist.
Mark Twain, who had met her when she was a child, declared she was one of the two most remarkable people of the nineteenth century — the other being Napoleon. He introduced her to financier Henry Rogers, who funded much of her education at Radcliffe. The friendship lasted until Twain's death in 1910.
During a lecture tour in the 1920s, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan performed on stage in vaudeville theaters across the United States. Helen answered audience questions by speaking aloud — in a voice difficult to understand but unmistakably real — while Anne spelled the questions into her hand. The show allowed them to fund their activist work.
Primary Sources
The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects.
I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing!
I am no worshipper of cloth of any color, but I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other socialists. I have a little flag; it is not red — it is a rainbow flag.
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision. The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Key Places
Helen Keller's birthplace, now a national museum. It was in this garden, at the water pump, that Helen's pivotal awakening to language took place in 1887.
A pioneering institution for the education of the blind where Anne Sullivan had herself studied. Helen stayed there and deepened her learning under the direction of Michael Anagnos.
A women's college affiliated with Harvard where Helen Keller earned her Bachelor of Arts in 1904, becoming the first deaf-blind person to graduate from a higher education institution.
The home where Helen Keller spent the last decades of her life and where she passed away in 1968. The original house having burned down in 1946, a new one was built so she could continue her work.
The federal capital where Helen Keller repeatedly lobbied Congress on behalf of the rights of people with disabilities, women, and workers, and where she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.