equality for minorities, and championed the underprivileged and the
oppressed. She also earned several prestigious awards from countries as
diverse as Japan, Brazil, and Lebanon. An impressive list of achievements for
any human, all this was accomplished by a woman who was blind and deaf.
Helen Keller was born a healthy child in 1880 in Alabama. Stricken by illness
at the tender age of nineteen months, Helen lost her ability to see, hear,
and speak. Growing up unable to comprehend the world around her, Helen became
wild and unruly, until her parents found help.
They contacted Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the famous inventor and teacher of
the deaf, who introduced them to an institute for the blind in Boston,
Massachusetts. A student there, Annie Sullivan, was asked to help. Annie
would later become known as the “Miracle Worker.”
Annie Sullivan taught Helen how to connect objects with letters by spelling
words into Helen’s hands. Helen’s breakthrough came when Annie held her
hand under a water pump while spelling “water” into her other hand
repeatedly. Helen suddenly understood, and from then on progressed by leaps
and bounds.
Having mastered both the manual and Braille alphabets, Helen became
proficient in reading and writing, and began learning how to speak in 1890.
Helen entered Radcliffe College and, assisted by Annie Sullivan, graduated
cum laude in 1904. She was the first blind-deaf person ever to graduate from
college.
Helen Keller spent the rest of her life as a writer, lecturer, and advocate
for the deaf and blind and other disadvantaged groups. She traveled to
numerous countries on behalf of the disabled, and founded the Helen Keller
Endowment Fund for the American Foundation for the Blind in 1930. She died on
June 1, 1968, an outstanding example of the unconquerable human spirit.
