Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was nineteen months old an illness left her deaf and blind. As a young child she could communicate only with simple signs she invented and was often frustrated. In 1887 the Perkins Institution for the Blind sent a young teacher, Anne Sullivan, to work with her. Sullivan spelled words into Helen's hand, and the breakthrough came at a water pump, when Helen understood that the letters spelled into one hand meant the water flowing over the other. She learned to read braille, to write and eventually to speak. She attended the Perkins Institution and other schools and in 1904 graduated from Radcliffe College, the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor's degree. While a student she wrote The Story of My Life (1903). She spent her life writing, lecturing around the world and campaigning for people with disabilities, especially for the American Foundation for the Blind, and she supported causes such as women's suffrage. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and died in Connecticut in 1968.

Helen Keller is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A Christian who followed the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg (the New Church); she called herself a Christian socialist. Source: Wikipedia