Helen keller
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| Helen keller |
Her contribution
She was not born blind and deaf,but actually a typical, healthy, beautiful little girl. It was not until nineteen months later that she came down with an illness that the doctoer described as an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain. Keller did not have the illness for a long time,but the illness left her blind,deaf,and unable to speak.By age seven she had invented over sixty different signs that she could use to communicate with her family. In 1887,her parents, Captain Arthur H.Kller and Kate Adams keller,finallly contacted Alexander Graham Bell,who worked with deaf vhildren. He advised them to contact the perkins institute for the blind in watertown,assachusetts.they delegated the teacher Anna Sullivan,who was then only 20 years old,to try open up Helen's mind.It was the beginning of a 49-year period of working togerther.
Sullivan demanded and got permission from Helen's father to isolate the girl from the rest of the family,in a little house in their garden. Her first task was to instill discipline in the spoiled girl.Helen's big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realized thet the motions her palm symbolized the idea of"water" and nerly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familliar objects in her world (including her prized doll). Anne was able to teach Helen to think intelligibly and to speak,using the Tadoma method:touching the lips of others as they spoke,feeling the vibrations,and spelling of alphabetical characters in the palm of Helen's hand.She also learned to read English,French,German,Greek,and Latin in braille.
In 1889,she attended perkins institute for the Blind and she also attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York. When Helen was 24 in 1904, she graduated from Radcliffe Collage, where Anne Sullivan had translated every word in her hand,and blind person to graduate from a collage. with tremendous willpower Helen went on to become a world-famous speaker and author.She made it her own life's mission to fight for the sensorially handicapped in the world.In 1915,she founded Helen Keller international,a non-profit organization for preventing blindness.Helen and Anne Sullivan traveled all over the world to over 39 contries,and made several trips to Japan,becameing a favorite of the Japanese pepole.Helen Keller met every U.S.presdent from Grover Cleveland to Jhone F.Kennedy and was friends with many famous figures including Alezander Graham Bell,charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain.
Helen Keller was a member of the Socialist party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working classes from 1909 to 1921. She supported Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Her political views were reinforced by visiting workers.In her words,"I have visited sweatshops,Factories,crowded slums. If i could not see it,I could smell it."
newspaper columnists who had prasied her courage and intelligence before she came out as a socialist now called attention to her disabilities. the editor of the brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the mainfest limitations of her development."Keller responded to that editor,referring to haveing met him before he knew of her political views:
"At that time the compliment he paid me were so generous that i blus to remember them. But now that i have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that i am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since i met him...Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent."
Helen Keller also joined the industrial union, the industrial Workers of the World (IWW),in 1912 after she feit that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog."Helen Keller worte for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In "Why i became an IWW" Helen wrote thet her motivation for activism came in part due to her concern about blindness and other disabillities:
I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame that ended in blindness. Helen keller wrote glowingly of the emergence of communism during the Russian Revolution (See ISBN 0684818868). Her contacts with suspected communists were frequently investigated by the FBI. In 1920 she was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. In the 1920s, she sent a hundred dollars to the NAACP with a letter of support that appeared in its magazine The Crisis. In 1925 she adderssed a convention of Lions Clubs interational giving that organisation a major focus for its service work which still continues today.
In 1960 her book Light in my Darkness was published in which she advocated the teachings of Emaunel Swedenborg. She also wrote a lengthy autobiography.she wrote a total of eleven books, and authored numerous articles. Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American foundation for the blind. On september 14, 1964,President Lyndon B.Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom,the United states'highest civilian honor. Helen keller died on june 1,1968 at the age of 87 ,more than thirty years after the death of Anna Sullivan. She was cremated and her remains were placed in the Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea in Washington National Cathedral.
Helen Keller's Quotes
- "self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world."
- Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
- "The best and most beautiful things in the world can't be seen or even touched,They must be felt within the heart."
- "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.Nothing can be done without hope and condfidence."
- Keep your face to the sunshine and you can't see the shadow.
- Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
- All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
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