Tuscumbia, Alabama: Born June 27, 1880: Her father had been an officer in the Confederate Army, and her mother was a cousin of Robert E. Lee. Helen was rendered both deaf and blind by a childhood disease, possibly meningitis or scarlet fever (at age nineteen months).
She was brought by her parents to Baltimore, Maryland for a consultation with (the inventor) Alexander Graham Bell, a well–known expert, as well, in deafness. In turn, Bell suggests that the Keller’s contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind further north in Boston.
The Institute, in turn, assigned one of its graduates, communication teacher Anne Sullivan, to work with Helen. Sullivan, then twenty years old, and herself visually impaired. Sullivan went on to work with Keller in different capacities (instructor, governess, and companion) – for 49 years. Sullivan will later be immortalized on the stage as “the Miracle Worker.”
Helen Keller was to learn Braille and become the first deaf–blind person to graduate college in the U.S. (Radcliffe, magna cum laude, 1904, at age 24). She also went on to learn how to read French, German, Greek and Latin.
Keller and Sullivan traveled to over 39 countries together, and Helen achieved celebrity status in many countries, including Japan. In the U.S., Helen Keller was a political activist, whose activities spanned a spectrum of liberal, socialist, and educational causes.
Her twelve books include:
The Frost King (1891),
The Story of My Life (1903)
The World I Live In (1908)
and
Out of the Dark (1913).
– after Wikipedia