Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, Helen Keller lost her
hearing and sight at 19 months after an unknown illness, perhaps
rubella or scarlet fever. When she was 6, Anne Mansfield Sullivan
arrived as her teacher- Keller recounted the astonishing story of
their relationship in The Story of My Life, later adapted in the
play and film The Miracle Worker. She graduated from Radcliffe
College in 1904--becoming the first deafblind person to earn a
bachelor's degree--and went on to write a dozen books and numerous
newspaper and magazine articles. She suffered a stroke in 1960, and
died at home in Westport, Connecticut, on June 1, 1968.
Kim E. Nielsen is Distinguished University Professor and Disability
Studies Chair at The University of Toledo, and was founding
president of the Disability History Association. She is the author,
among other books, of The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (2004),
Beyond the Miracle Worker- Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary
Friendship with Helen Keller (2009), and A Disability History of
the United States (2012).
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