How did helen keller die

Undeterred by deafness and blindness, Helen Keller rose to become a major 20 th century humanitarian, educator and writer. Keller, a farmer, newspaper editor, and Confederate Army veteran, and his second wife Katherine Adams Keller, an educated woman from Memphis. She had no formal education until age seven, and since she could not speak, she developed a system for communicating with her family by feeling their facial expressions.

Helen keller success story

Although Helen initially resisted her, Sullivan persevered. Within a few weeks, Keller caught on. A year later, Sullivan brought Keller to the Perkins School in Boston, where she learned to read Braille and write with a specially made typewriter. Newspapers chronicled her progress.

What is helen keller famous for

At fourteen, she went to New York for two years where she improved her speaking ability, and then returned to Massachusetts to attend the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. Sullivan went with her, helping Keller with her studies. Even before she graduated, Keller published two books, The Story of My Life and Optimism , which launched her career as a writer and lecturer.

She authored a dozen books and articles in major magazines, advocating for prevention of blindness in children and for other causes. Sullivan married Harvard instructor and social critic John Macy in , and Keller lived with them. She supported the suffrage movement, embraced socialism, advocated for the blind and became a pacifist during World War I.

In , she joined Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, and other social activists in founding the American Civil Liberties Union; four years later she became affiliated with the new American Foundation for the Blind in During World War II, she toured military hospitals bringing comfort to soldiers. A second film on her life won the Academy Award in ; The Miracle Worker —which centered on Sullivan—won the Pulitzer Prize as a play and was made into a movie two years later.