day 5________friday

Helen Adams Keller

(june 27’ 1880) was an American author, political activist and lecturer. She was the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how keller’s teacher, Anne sulivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, he has become known worldwide through the dramatic depiction’s of the play and film The Miracle Worker.

Early childhood and illness

Helen Adams Keller was born on the plantation called Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on june 27, 1880. The family originates from Switzerland, Helen keller was not born blind and deaf, it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness describe by doctors as “ an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain “ which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. Anne sulivan arrived at keller’s house in march 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with d-o-l-l for the doll that she had brought keller as present. Starting in may 1888, keller attended the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1892 helen keller and anne sulivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-humason School for the Deaf and Horace mann School for the Deaf. In 1896 they returned to Massachusetts and keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College. 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. Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles. Keller suffered a series of strikes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home. Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968 at her home. Kellers life has been interpreted many times, she appeared in a silent film, Deliverance (1919), which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style. She was also the subject of the documentaries Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by Katharine Comell, and The Story of Helen Keller, part of the famous Americans series produced by Hearst Entertainment.