Helen Keller was a unique and inspiring woman able to overcome incredible obstacles through her learning to read.  Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, Keller developed a condition that left her blind, deaf and mute (Einhorn 3).  Until the age of six, she lived in dark silence with no means of communicating in any proper or meaningful way.  Shortly before her seventh birthday, however, Anne Sullivan arrived, where she would serve as Keller’s mentor and supporter in her journey toward knowledge, literacy and communication.

Anne Sullivan’s arrival immersed Keller into a new world.  Where she was once living “without hope, anticipation, wonder, faith or joy” (Brooks 6), she was now establishing connections between things and recognizing their relevance.  The time she spent in lessons with Sullivan provided her with the opportunity to learn to read through the connections she made by tactical means.  This newfound ability to communicate “allowed her to take the giant step between the mimicking animal and the thinking, communicating human being” (13).  Sullivan also brought Keller to the ‘Perkins Institution for the Blind’, allowing her to connect with other children with similar disabilities.  She quickly made friends and was thrilled that they knew the same ‘manual alphabet’, allowing for easy communication between them (Story of My Life 44).  Eventually, Keller learned the method of hand-writing employed by the blind (Hitz 310) and fully learned language through being in contact with it first-hand, as in reading books and participating in daily conversation (313).

Keller was an extremely bright child.  She herself wrote: “Blindness has no limiting effect upon mental vision. My intellectual horizon is infinitely wide” (The World I Live In 129).  Reading books was an incredibly important aspect of Keller’s progression toward literacy.  Once she mastered the Braille system, she regularly spent time reading books of various genres.  She once stated that, through reading more sophisticated works, “…when I began to talk and write, these words and sentences would flash out quite naturally, so that my friends wondered at the richness of my vocabulary” (Story of My Life 106).

Keller attended Radcliffe College in September of 1900 where she experienced what college life was like for a deaf-blind woman (Lash 259).  Although she endured hardships due to her disabilities, she attained a Bachelor of Arts degree (270).  Having also learned to speak orally, she and Annie’s oldest friend, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, suggested that she use her abilities to “break down the barriers which separate the deaf from mankind” (278).  Later, she would be known as an author, a friend to many prominent individuals, an advocate for the disabled, and a passionate political activist.

Regarding her political, Keller’s now fluent and intelligent communication allowed her to speak her mind on issues important to her.  She was, at first, politically cautious due to the extreme conservatism and antiradicalism that existed at the time (Radical Lives 48).  She received much criticism for declaring herself as a socialist but wrote many articles defending her beliefs, especially against the Capitalist paper, The Common Cause, where she argued that they were printing falsified information (“How I Became a Socialist” 2002).

Keller also worked with the ‘American Foundation for the Blind’ as a fundraiser and ambassador (Crow 848).  She criticized other disabled institutions by claiming that not enough was being done to aid in the learning of blind and/or deaf individuals and thus presented suggestions to better these institutions (Nielsen 2012).  Keller also worked to be a voice for the enfranchisement of women.  She criticized the then current government by stating, “I do not believe that the present government has any intention of giving women a part in national politics … the people are not free, and the day of women’s freedom seems still to be in the far future” (Nielsen 2012).

Helen Keller was a passionate activist who did not allow her disabilities prevent her from accomplishing great things.  Through the support of her teachers and friends, especially Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to utilize her working senses and make up for what she lost.  Her eventual mastery of literacy and orality allowed her to make a name for herself and become a prominent figure in history.