Some things I didn't know about Helen Keller

[susanreads]

It's Helen Keller Day on Second Life, and for those of us who don't hang out there, FWD is hosting a Mythbusting Blogswarm. Until recently I only knew the usual story about how "miracle worker" Anne Sullivan taught Helen to communicate. Her life after that isn't so widely publicised, possibly because she grew up to have opinions of her own and be a political activist. "Inspiring" stories of "overcoming" disability is one thing; real women with Opinions is something else.

From Wikipedia:

Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes. She was a suffragist, a pacifist, an opponent of Woodrow Wilson, 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).

She also wrote books, and articles, including How I Became a Socialist, which includes her response to an article that assumed she had "imbibed such opinions" from "Mrs. John Macy" (Anne Sullivan):

Mr. Macy may be an enthusiastic Marxist propagandist, though I am sorry to say he has not shown much enthusiasm in propagating his Marxism through my fingers. Mrs. Macy is not a Marxist, nor a socialist. Therefore what the Common Cause says about her is not true. The editor must have invented that, made it out of whole cloth, and if that is the way his mind works, it is no wonder that he is opposed to socialism. He has not sufficient sense of fact to be a socialist or anything else intellectually worthwhile.

I think she would do well in Bloglandia!


More posts about Helen Keller can be found at the blogswarm master post. Some of her political writing is online at the Helen Keller Reference Archive.

I seem to have used rather a lot of scare quotes here.