Helen Keller’s birth anniversary
Author, political activist and lecturer Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Alabama. As a deafblind person she was the first to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree. Helen Keller was not born as a deafblind person, when she was 19 months old she contracted a disease, which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis.
Even though the illness did not last, it left her permanently deaf and blind. Throughout her life, Keller was determined to learn to communicate as conventionally as possible. She learnt how to speak and also learnt how to lip-read, and developed an acute sense of touch. As an author, Keller wrote and published around 12 books including her spiritual autobiography “Light in my Darkness”. She was a widely-traveled individual and outspoken in her anti-war beliefs. She was a member of the Socialist Party of America and was involved in the women’s suffrage and labor right movements. She was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 1971.