Helen Keller was an American author who was also the first deaf and blind person who earned a bachelor’s degree. She also founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Helen was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her father Arthur H. Keller served as an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
Helen was not born with disabilities. When she was 19 months old, she had lost both her sight and hearing due to an illness which is now known as Scarlet Fever or Meningitis.
Quick Facts: –
- Helen was not able to communicate with anyone until the age of seven years.
- She started to communicate using different mediums taught by her teacher Anne Sullivan.
- This is also the reason why she herself believed that her life started at the age of seven.
- Her behavior had become highly erratic as a young child because she was not able to express herself.
- In 1889, Keller went to Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. It was her first formal education.
- During her junior year in Radcliff College in Cambridge, she also wrote her autobiography ‘The Story of My Life’.
- Helen was also an excellent typist and could use both a standard typewriter and a Braille writer.
- Helen Keller also focused on some social and political issues like women’s right to vote and use birth control.
- On June 1, 1968, she peacefully died in her sleep.
