The mystery of Language

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, anti-militarism, and other similar causes. The story of Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, was made famous by Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life

• At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her both deaf and blind. She lived, as she recalled in her autobiography "at sea in a dense fog".
• One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this irony in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his."
• Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the two-years older daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibration of their footsteps.
• Alexander Graham Bell was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind. The Director of the Institute authorized a 20-year-old alumna of the school, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor.



• Sullivan arrived at Keller's house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever remember as My soul's birthday.
• Keller's breakthrough in communication came the next month when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water". Writing in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment: "I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!"
• Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities.