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Helen Keler was born in June 27,1880, in Tuscumbia,Alabama. They lived on a homestead,Ivy Green, that was built by Helen's grandfather, decades earlier.
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Helen Keller was 19 months old when she contracted an illness, which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. This illness didn't last long,but it left her blind and deaf.
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Michael Anaganos,the school director, asked a former student named Anne Sullivan, to become Keller's instructor.
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When Sullivan arrived at Keller's house, she immediatly began to teach Helen to spell "d-o-l-l",for the doll that Sullivan brought as a gift, with her hands. She was frustaded at first, but when she realized that the motions her teaher was making on the palm of her hand,while running cool water over her other hand.
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In New York, Helen attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf,and to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf.
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Helen entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance,in 1900,to Radcliffe College
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The Story of My Life was written by Helen Keller with the help of Anne and her husband.It includes words that Helen wrote and the story of her life up to age 21.
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At age 24, Helen graduated from Radcliffe,becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
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The World I Live In gave readers an insight into how she felt about the world.
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She actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class form 1909-1921.Helen supported Socialist Party canditate Eugine V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the Presidency.
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The Industrial Workers of the World were known as IWW or the Wobblies. She said that socialism was "sinking the political bog".
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At first, Anne married John Macy in 1905,and later on her health started failing her.Polly Thompson was hired to keep house. She was a young women with no experience with deaf or blind people, but she eventually became a constant companion to Helen.
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The Helen Keller International orginazation is divoted to research in vision,health and nutrition
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She wrote for them between 1916 and 1918.In Why I Became an IWW,Helen explained that her motivation for activism came in part of her concern about blindness and other disabilities.
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After Sullivan's death, Keller and Thompson moved to connecticut.They traveled worldwide and raised funds for the blind.
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When Thompson had a heart stroke,Winnie Corbally,a nurse who was brought in to care for Thompson in 1957, stayed on after Thompson's death,on 1960,and was Helen's companion for the rest of her life.
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Helen suffered a series of strokes and she spend her last years of her life at her house,Easton,Connecticut.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Helen the Presidential Medal of Freedom,which is one of the United States two highest civilian honors
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Helen was elected to the National's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair
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Helen died on her sleep at home, located in Easton,Connecticut. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedrial in Washington D.C., and her ashes were placed there next to Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson
