The life of Helen Keller is one of the most admired and controversial stories of an individual overcoming the dual handicaps of being both deaf and blind at the same time. She has been an inspiration to unknown numbers of individuals with similar or other physical or mental afflictions.
The production “The Miracle Worker” is a 1962 American biographical film about Anne Sullivan’s bond to Helen Keller starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke as the principal actresses.
The film won five Academy Awards with Bancroft receiving the Best Actress Award and Duke the Best Supporting Actress Award.
The off Broadway play of the story took place in June-July 2020 for the 59th season in the Alabama town of Tuscumbia located approximately 170 miles from Chattanooga on U.S.
Highway 72 W. past Huntsville and Decatur in Colbert County and is about 20 miles east of the Natchez Trace Parkway.Her birthplace, Ivy Green, is a Southern plantation that was built in 1820. It was made a permanent shrine and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1954.
Adjacent to the main house is Helen’s birthplace cottage, which consists of a large room with a lovely bay window and playroom.
The structures contain the Keller families’ original furnishings, hundreds of personal mementos, gifts and books from a lifetime of travels in 39 countries on five different continents.
It is located at 300 N. Commons St. W, Tuscumbia, Alabama 35674 (256) 383-4066 and admission is charged to tour the facility.
Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy child on June 27, 1880 to Captain Arthur H. and Kate Adams Keller of Tuscumbia. He father was an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and was an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian newspaper for many years. Her mother was also the daughter of a Confederate general.
At the age of 19 months Helen contracted an unknown illness described by some physicians as similar to scarlet fever or meningitis. As a result, she became both deaf and blind.
She was a wild and belligerent child coping with her dual handicaps and at the age of six was taken to an appointment to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell by her parents at his “School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics for Speech” in Boston.
Said visit resulted with the unruly child meeting Anne Mansfield Sullivan as her teacher on March 3, 1887 and eventually she would learn the fingertip alphabet and then learn to write. In six months, she knew 625 words to communicate with Anne Sullivan.
By the age of 10 Helen had mastered Braille and the manual alphabet and could operate a typewriter.
With self-determination she learned to speak by the age of 16 well enough to attend preparatory school and in 1904 she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College as a Phi Beta Kappa Scholar.
In 1903 while still a student she wrote “The Story of My Life”.
During her life she learned five languages in Braille, wrote 11 books, numerous articles and lectures in 30 more countries on five continents.
She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor an American citizen can receive, from President Lyndon B. Johnson for political activism.
On the anniversary of her 100th birthday, President Jimmy Carter in 1980 posthumously issued a presidential proclamation to recognize her accomplishments.
Her remarkable life was not without some controversy during this era as she was a prolific author, political activist and socialist.
Always outspoken in her convictions she became a member of the Socialist Party of America and actively campaigned and wrote articles in support of the working class.
Ms. Keller spoke in 25 countries about the problems of deaf persons and the conditions under which they had to live.
She was both admired and disliked for her various roles as a women’s suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter and opponent of President Woodrow Wilson.
Her liberal stands on behalf of the NAACP, and as a founder of the ACLU resulted in some censorship of her writings by the Rockefeller National Newspaper chain but she fought back and they relented and her words were again published.
The attitude of some columnists changed from praise and admiration for her work on behalf of the deaf and blind before she expressed her socialist point of view.
Instead they criticized her viewpoints on the basis of her disabilities as being the cause of her liberal stands on social issues.
She defended her motivation for disagreement by stating that it came in part from her “concern about blindness and other disabilities.”
The complexity of Helen Keller’s life is too enormous to be covered in a short article. Readers are respectfully urged to Google her name and review the numerous sources that describe in great detail how this remarkable woman demonstrated as to how her dual handicaps did not prevent her from living a full (and controversial) life.
In 1961 she suffered a series of strokes that resulted in her being homebound in her home “Arcan Ridge” in Easton, Connecticut. She devoted much of her later life raising funds for the American Federation for the Blind.
She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968 a few weeks short of her 88th birthday and her ashes are buried at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. beside her two constant teachers and companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.
American has never had a more accomplished (and controversial) individual who overcame her severe handicaps than Helen Keller!
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Jerry Summers
(If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com)
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November 04, 2020 at 02:55AM
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Jerry Summers: Helen Keller - A Complex Life Story - The Chattanoogan
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