Helen Keller overcame the loss of both sight and hearing to become a celebrated author, lecturer, and political activist, and one of the most admired and inspiring figures of the twentieth century. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, she was left deaf and blind by an illness — probably scarlet fever or meningitis — before she was two years old, and grew into a wild, frustrated, isolated child.
Her life was transformed at the age of six by a young, partially blind teacher named Anne Sullivan. Sullivan broke through Keller's isolation by spelling words into her hand, a breakthrough immortalized in the moment Keller connected the finger-spelled word "water" to the cool liquid running over her hand. Under Sullivan's patient instruction she learned to read Braille, to write, and even to speak. In 1904 she graduated from Radcliffe College, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor's degree.
Keller devoted the rest of her long life to advocacy. She campaigned tirelessly for the blind and the deaf, helped build the American Foundation for the Blind, and lectured across the globe to raise awareness and funds.
She was also a committed radical — a socialist, suffragist, and pacifist whose outspoken political views surprised those who saw her only as a symbol of uplift. Her memoir, The Story of My Life, became a classic, and the story of her education was dramatized in the play and film The Miracle Worker. She died in 1968, an enduring emblem of human resilience.