Important dates
- June 27, 1880: birth of Helen Keller in Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA.
- 1890: Learn how to read and speak
- 1894: enrool in the Wright-Humason Scool for the Deaf in NYC
- 1896: Enroll in Cambridge School for Young Ladies in Massachusetts
- 1903: wrote The story of my life and Optimism
- 1904: Gratuated
- 1908: wrote The world I live in
- 1913: start lecturing about blindness
- 1920: create the the American Civiil Liberties Union
- 1927: wrote My religion
- 1938: wrote Helen Keller’s Journal
- 1957: wrote Open Door
- June 1, 1968: death of Helen Keller
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA. Keller suffered from a disease when she was 19 months old that left her deaf and blind. After being diagnosed, she was sent by her doctor to Boston to work with a young Anne Sullivan working at the Perkins Institutions for blind.
In a matter of month Keller was able to identify object and learn how to spell and read them with only finger signals on her palm. Around 1890, still in Boston, she went from reading to be able to speak with Sarah Fuller help at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. Helen Keller was also able to lip read while having her finger on the other speaker’s mouth and throat at the age of 14. At the same age she joined the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City. Two years later at 16 she enrolled in Cambridge School for Young Ladies in Massachusetts then was admitted to Radcliffe College in the 1990’s where she graduated in 1904.
This level education never achieved so far by a disabled person, she started writing about blindness which was taboo then. She was first published thanks to Edward W. Bok in the Ladies’ Home Journal, quickly followed by The Atlantic Monthly and The Century.
She wrote her fist book The Story of My Life in 1903, then wrote Optimism in 1903, The World I Live In in 1908, My Religion in 1927, Helen Keller’s Journal in 1938, and The Open Door in 1957.
In 1913, she started lecturing with an interpret for the American Foundation for the Blind which took her to multiple world tours. She was able to raise approximatively $2 million endowment found thanks to her lecture which made possible the creation of American Civil Liberties Union with help of civil rights activist Roger Nash Baldwin 1920.
Her experience and influence improved deaf and blind people treatment as disabled were treated in asylums.
Helen Keller died on June 1, 1968 in Westport, Connecticut. Leaving behind her a legacy that influenced million of disabled people life. On a medical treatment point view as much as philosophical.