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Helen Keller: Helen Keller International
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In 1904, Helen Keller was only 24 years old when she became the first blind and deaf person ever to graduate from a University. She went on to become a world famous speaker, author and advocate for people with disabilities. In 1915 she founded HKI (Helen Keller International), a non-profit organization for preventing blindness and malnutrition. As a firm believer in human rights, Helen Keller helped to found the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) in 1920. Much of her later life was devoted to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind and Overseas Blind. She eventually traveled to over 39 countries including Australia, South America, Europe, Africa and Japan to lecture and raise awareness on the rights of people with disabilities.
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Helen Keller was an American lecturer, author, and activist. Deaf and blind since early childhood, and living in an era where most individuals similarly afflicted were consigned to an asylum, Helen Keller overcame her disabilities with the aide of mentor Anne Sullivan and rose to international renown. Keller used her fame to educate others about the blind and to raise funds for related charities. But her commitment to social change was extensive. She was a personal friend of controversial birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, donated money to the NAACP in 1916, and was a founding member of the ACLU. Her legacy has inspired books and films, notably The Miracle Worker (1962) and The Miracle Continues (1984), and her name and likeness repeatedly crop up in everything from children's picture books to episodes of South Park.
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As broad and wide ranging as her interests were, Helen Keller never lost sight of the needs of other blind and deaf-blind individuals. From her youth, she was always willing to help them by appearing before legislatures, giving lectures, writing articles, and above all, by her own example of what a severely disabled person could accomplish. When the American Foundation for the Blind, the national clearinghouse for information on blindness, was established in 1921, she at last had an effective national outlet for her efforts. From 1924 until her death she was a member of the Foundation staff, serving as counselor on national and international relations. It was ... in 1924 that Miss Keller began her campaign to raise the "Helen Keller Endowment Fund" for the Foundation. Until her retirement from public life, she was tireless in her efforts to make the Fund adequate for the Foundation's needs.
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Helen Keller wrote glowingly of the emergence of communism during the Russian Revolution of 1917 (See ISBN 0684818868). Her contacts with suspected communists were frequently investigated by the FBI. In 1920 she was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. In the 1920s, she sent a hundred dollars to the NAACP with a letter of support that appeared in its magazine The Crisis. In 1925 she addressed a convention of Lions Clubs International giving that organisation a major focus for its service work which still continues today.
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Helen Keller was born and raised in Northwest Alabama, and it was in Tuscumbia that she learned to communicate through the tireless efforts of her equally famous teacher, Annie Sullivan. Keller went on to become an international symbol of hope and spent her life working to improve the conditions of the blind and deaf-blind around the world. Festival organizers work to honor her spirit and lifelong efforts to better the lives of others.
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Helen Keller was born in 1880 with sight and hearing, but an illness at eighteen months left her deaf and blind. Keller overcame these disabilities to became an international spokesperson championing the causes of education, research and opportunity for the blind. Among her many accomplishments are publishing fourteen books, visiting thirty-five countries and meeting every U.S. president from Coolidge to Kennedy.
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Helen Keller International