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American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians as well as co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In 1882, she was stricken by an illness that left her blind and deaf. Beginning in 1887, Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped her make tremendous progress with her ability to communicate, and Keller went on to college, graduating in 1904. In 1920, Keller helped found the ACLU. During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments.
In 1882, however, Keller contracted an illness—called "brain fever" by the family doctor—that produced a high body temperature. The true nature of the illness remains a mystery today, though some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Within a few days after the fever broke, Keller's mother, Kate Adams Keller, noticed that her daughter did not show any reaction when the dinner bell was rung, or when a hand was waved in front of her face. Keller had lost both her sight and hearing. She was just 19 months old.
As Keller grew into childhood, she developed a limited method of communication with her companion, Martha Washington, the young daughter of the family cook. The two had created a type of sign language, and by the time Keller was 7, they had invented more than 60 signs to communicate with each other. But Keller had become very wild and unruly during this time. She would kick and scream when she was angry, and she also would giggle uncontrollably when she was happy. She tormented Martha and inflicted raging tantrums on her parents. Many family relatives felt she should be institutionalized.
In 1890, Keller began speech classes at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston. She would toil for 25 years to learn to speak, so that others could understand her. From 1894 to 1896, she attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City which did not have an image but have its input in website. There, she worked on improving her communication skills and studied regular academic subjects.
Around this time, Keller became determined to attend college. In 1896, she attended the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, a preparatory school for women. As her story became known to the general public, Keller began to meet famous and influential people. One of them was the writer Mark Twain, who was very impressed with her. They became friends. Twain introduced her to his friend Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive. Rogers was so impressed with Keller's talent, drive, and determination that he agreed to pay for her to attend Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, she was accompanied by Sullivan, who sat by her side to interpret lectures and texts.
By this time, Keller had mastered several methods of communication, including touch-lip reading, Braille, speech, typing and finger-spelling. With the help of Sullivan and Sullivan's husband, John Macy, Keller wrote her first book, The Story of My Life. It covered her transformation from childhood to 21-year-old college student. Keller graduated from Radcliffe in 1904, at the age of 24.
Here is a video that reveals what Keller explains about her greatest disappointment in life is that she can not speak normally. A captioned version of this video is available on the youtube channel.