Twenty-Five Greatest Champions of America: Part Two
Number 16: Helen Keller
Perhaps the most inspirational example of human achievement was born June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At 19 months of age, Helen Keller was blinded and rendered deaf by a severe fever. Unable to communicate with others, young Helen became a tormented young girl given to violent tantrums and rebellious tirades. At the recommendation of Alexander Graham Bell, Helen Keller was sent to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Massachusetts, where she came under the tutelage of Anne Sullivan.
Exhibiting great love and patience and utilizing a rudimentary alphabet system, Sullivan slowly coached Helen Keller into a hard-working and creative student. Keller's education continued over the years, with stints at Horace Mann School for the Deaf, Wright-Humason School in New York City, and Radcliffe College. With help from Sullivan and her husband, Keller wrote her inspiring autobiography in 1903 and became a dynamic advocate for people with visual and hearing disabilities.
In the years that followed, her activism expanded to include women's suffrage, opposition to child labor and capital punishment, and a belief in pacifism. In 1909, she even went so far as to join the Socialist Party, having been deeply disillusioned by the exploitation of labor and inspired by The Communist Manifesto (which she read in German Braille).
While her socialist views somewhat skewed her commitment to America's founding principles (which were the antithesis of Marxism), Helen Keller nevertheless demonstrated by her flawless example the hope of the American Dream and challenged her nation to the highest aspirations of human achievement and social equality.
Sources for this installment included Time magazine, American Foundation for the Blind, and the Biography Channel web site.
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The next installment will examine five more champions of America.
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