Helen Keller: Adversity Of The Blind And Deaf

Helen Keller

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart”. American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians. Together with the help of her beloved teacher Anne Sullivan, who was also partially blind, Helen was able to achieve many goals in life. Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Keller was born with her senses of sight and hearing, and started speaking when she was just 6 months old. She started walking at the age of 1. In 1882, however, Keller contracted an illness called "brain fever" by the family doctor, that produced a high body temperature.
Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading their lips with her hands—her sense of touch had become extremely subtle. She became proficient at using braille and reading sign language with her hands as well. Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities.The Deaf community was widely impacted by her. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about Deaf people conditions. She was a suffragette, a pacifist, a radical socialist and a birth control supporter. In 1915 she and George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Keller traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark
Many of her speeches and writings were about women’s right to vote and the impacts of war. She had speech therapy in order to have her voice heard better by the public. When articles such as the Rockefeller denied to publish her articles, she spoke out to them in till her work was on display. She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading Progress and Poverty, Helen Keller was already a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction. Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Anne married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thomson was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller. Anne Sullivan died in 1936 after a coma, with Keller holding her hand. Keller and Thomson moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funds for the blind. Thomson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered, and died in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a nurse whom they originally hired to care for Thomson in 1957, stayed on after her death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her