"The Grown-Up Helen Keller: 'Goodwill Ambassador to the World'" by Kim E. Nielsen

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NUMBER 92, SPRING 2009

ALABAMA HERITAGE

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, AND THE ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

ALABAMA HERITAGE

Cover: At twenty-four Helen Keller had the richest chapters of her life story ahead of her.

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T A B L E

O F

C O N T E N T S

CLASH OF CULTURES: THE CREEK WAR IN ALABAMA

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By Mike Bunn and Clay Williams Largely unacknowledged and misunderstood, the battles that took place on Alabama soil during the Creek War shocked one nation, uprooted another, and influenced public and political policy for years to come.

THE GROWN-UP HELEN KELLER: “GOOD WILL AMBASSADOR TO THE WORLD”

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by Kim E. Nielsen As an adult, the opinionated and erudite Helen Keller focused on international activism, becoming an important advocate for the rights of people with disabilities around the world.

FRUITHURST: THE ALABAMA WINE COUNTRY

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By Mary Stanton Only a few years after its founding, Fruithurst established itself as a lucrative boomtown thanks to award-winning vineyards and a steady inflow of tourists. Its decline would be just as swift.

“THE SATANIC STORM KING”: ALABAMA’S 1932 TORNADO OUTBREAK

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By Katie Cole In the midst of the Great Depression, Alabama was ravaged by a series of tornadoes that damaged parts of the state beyond recognition.

DEPARTMENTS 6 48 51 53 56

Southern Architecture and Preservation: The Drish House Recollections: Prison Stripes to Pinstripes Nature Journal: Catching Convicts Reading the Southern Past: Injustice Rendered Contributors & Sources WWW

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“Good Will Ambassador to the World”

THE GROWN-UP

HELEN KELLER As an adult, the opinionated and erudite Helen Keller focused on international activism, becoming an important advocate for the rights of people with disabilities around the world.

By KIM E. NIELSEN

S

AY THE NAME HELEN KELLER, and we see an indelible image at a water pump in late nineteenthcentury Tuscumbia. Tousled golden hair partially obscures the dirty but angelic face—obstinance giving way to wonderment—as teacher Anne Sullivan finally breaks through the mist of Helen’s deafness and blindness by spelling “w-a-t-e-r” into her outstretched hand.

And there she has remained, frozen in time, a “wild child” with the face of ingénue actress Patty Duke and her “miracle worker,” played with grit and an Irish brogue by Anne Bancroft in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker and the Broadway play by William Gibson that spawned it. Both renditions enthralled audiences, garnered awards, and satisfied us that we knew the story of Helen.

The depictions were magical, to be sure, but the grown-up Helen Keller would have been unhappy—or more likely furious—to see her story end at the water pump. Certainly that remarkable moment opened the vital door to increased communication for the isolated child, but it was only the beginning. Beyond it lay nearly seventy years of accomplishment. Keller was a thinker, writer, and orator—an activist, advocate, and ambassador. The “wild child” became an adult with intelligence Many images of Keller as a young woman show her interacting with the natural world. Circa 1907. (Library of Congress)

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and ambition. Fortunately these refinements never polished away what made the child such a jewel in our memories—her fierce curiosity, independence, passion, and joy. The grown-up Helen Keller drank Scotch, not tea, as she changed the world.

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HE MUCH-TOLD details of Keller’s early life have captured the imaginations of schoolchildren for generations. Born in 1880, Keller was left deaf and blind by an illness at nineteen-months of age. Her parents Arthur and Kate Keller feared she was completely unteachable—even of life’s most basic tasks. Family members, neighbors, and others agreed. Thanks to the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, however, the stubborn parents hired teacher Anne Sullivan from Perkins School for the Blind in Boston in 1887. Under Sullivan’s tutelage, Helen exceeded everyone’s expectations, quickly demonstrating a love of learning. In addition to the education she received from Sullivan, she attended New York’s Wright-Humason School for deaf students as a teenager. Then, motivated by her own ambition, a desire to prove her teacher’s pedagogical skills, and the encouragement of Alexander Graham Bell, Keller decided to pursue a college education at a time when very few women did. She set her sights on Radcliffe College, the prestigious female counterpart to Harvard, and prepared for the entrance exams by studying at the Cambridge (Massachusetts) School for Young Ladies and working with a private tutor.

Keller’s preparation included another component, more spiritual than academic. For years critics had questioned her capacity to think and to be fully human.

Perhaps in response to that criticism, she had converted to the religious teachings of eighteenth-century Swedish Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg in 1896. The Swedenborgian belief that the senses of one’s material body distracted one from developing the spiritual body meant that her deaf-blindness mattered little; indeed, it was a possible asset that allowed her to better focus on public service and the spiritual life.

This belief bolstered Keller when in 1900, despite widespread skepticism, she began coursework at Rad-

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The public image of Keller as a young, innocent girl remained the dominant one, as evidenced by photographs taken well into her adult years. Circa 1907. (Library of Congress) cliffe. There she embraced the claim of philosopher René Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” This reinforced Keller’s Swedenborgian conviction that her inner life was what gave her meaning. And because her inner life—spiritual and intellectual—was strong, she hoped and believed that she could share that with others through writing and activism, two pursuits that had grown very important to her.

Graduation from one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions was not what her parents had initially expected of their daughter when they hired Anne Sullivan. At Radcliffe, though, Keller excelled in her coursework despite significant hardships. Brailled textbooks showed up—when they arrived at all—late in

Graduation from one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions was not what her parents had initially expected of their daughter when they hired Anne Sullivan. the semester due to the complexities of acquiring them.

An exhausted Sullivan had to finger-spell every course lecture, reading, and discussion until the needed books arrived. And teachers and students frequently behaved awkwardly around the already famous deaf-blind woman. Despite it all, Keller loved the intellectual challenges and debates of the academic environment. Most importantly, however, her growing intellectual rigor gave her confidence.

Keller’s hopes of using her education to become a successful writer and political commentator were not unrealistic. While at Radcliffe, she wrote her autobiography, The Story of My Life, with the editing help of John Macy, a local editor and scholar. Published in 1903, Keller’s book became a runaway bestseller that was eventually translated into many languages. Keller’s political engagement had found new outlets at Radcliffe, where her professors, friends, and Macy had introduced her to a broad spectrum of literature, socialism, labor activism, political theory, and the joy of honest debate.

Keller graduated cum laude from Radcliffe in 1904 and entered adult life committed to a career of writing and political advocacy. And although Anne Sullivan married John Macy in 1905, she remained steadfastly

by Keller’s side and was committed to her participation in public life. Only fourteen years older than Keller, the teacher had become her student’s dear friend.

John Macy also supported Keller’s ambitions, and for a time the three shared one home. Keller clearly drew socialist ideas from Macy, but his involvement in socialism was not unique. In the early part of the twentieth century, socialist ideas and the Socialist Party attracted Americans from all economic classes. While progressives sought to pass legislation etablishing a minimum wage, maximum work hours, limits on child labor, and worker safety regulations, some, like Keller, grew frustrated at the slow pace and turned to socialism as a way to expedite the process. To Keller and others, socialism represented the best way to realize the equality and democracy of the American dream that had been, in their opinion, dirtied by growing economic inequalities and the unregulated nature of U.S. capitalism. Keller joined the Socialist Party in 1909.

Keller enjoys one of her first dogs. As an adult, she and Macy would both own dogs. Circa 1904. (Library of Congress) For the rest of her adult life she acted on her convictions—despite discouragement from those who believed her incapable of doing so—in a variety of venues and on behalf of many causes. She did so because of the firmness of her beliefs, because she deeply enjoyed doing so, and because, as she once wrote, “I do not like this world as it is. I am trying to make it a little more as I would like to have it.”

W

RITING AND ACTIVISM came naturally to this woman of opinions; making a living at them was not so easy.

In the early part of the 1900s Keller wrote a great deal. She published The World I Live In (1908), an attempt to prove to her critics that despite her

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deaf-blindness she lived in a rich and intellectually expansive world. She also compiled her numerous political speeches, articles, and letters into Out of the Dark: Essays, Letters, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision (1913).

This text included an article encouraging public health officials to get over their “false modesty” and educate women on venereal diseases, for in the first decade of the century, venereal infection passing from mothers to newborns caused at least forty percent of all blindness in the United States.

Keller also wrote in support of numerous other causes. She appealed for women’s suffrage. She publicly endorsed and gave money to striking workers in Little Falls, New York—workers led by the radical Industrial Workers of the World (also called the Wobblies). She criticized World War I as a profit-maker for military industrialists. She became a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. She encouraged education and employment for blind people, rather than condescension and charity. In all of this, she insisted that her reliance upon “the eyes of the mind” better equipped her to form opinions than “blind leaders” who ignored social inequalities.

Keller’s efforts, however, were frustrated by an uninterested reading public. Aside from her autobiography, her book sales were scant. Everyone wanted to hear of her childhood education and the seemingly heroic efforts of the teacher who rescued the tragically disabled child from isolation. Keller, however, tired of repeating the same story. She had become an adult. She had told her childhood story and wanted to move on to the issues that now interested her, and she sought to position disability as a political and civil rights issue rather than a call for pity.

Facing poor book sales, Keller branched out further.

She and Anne Sullivan Macy joined the vaudeville circuit and in 1919 made a Hollywood movie entitled Deliverance, a melodramatic black-and-white silent film, in only marginally successful efforts to make a living.

Macy became estranged from her husband John and in time experienced various illnesses that made full-time wage work difficult. Keller, therefore, embraced the task of household breadwinner for the two of them.

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After working and living together for many years, Keller and Macy enjoyed a close friendship that transcended their professional relationship. 1928. (Alabama Department of Archives and History)

W

HILE THE PUBLIC embraced Keller’s advocacy on behalf of the blind, it was less accepting of her input in other arenas. When she limited herself to topics of social service and the blind, the press called her a modern miracle, but when she spoke out on more charged issues, public reception cooled. In the early 1920s Keller’s life changed when she decided to set aside her public advocacy of radical and progressive politics.

The catalyst for her decision was the 1924 presidential nomination of Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette. Several months after the Farmer-Labor ticket announced this nomination, Keller issued a public letter. She explained that she had hesitated to support La Follette, “because I know that the newspaper opposed to the Progressive movement will cry out at the ‘pathetic exploitation of deaf and blind Helen Keller by the “motley elements” who support La Follette.’” She could not imagine “anything more fatuous and stupid than the

Keller tired of repeating the same story. She had become an adult.

She had told her childhood story and wanted to move on to the issues that now interested her. attitude of the press toward anything I say on public affairs.” It infuriated her, but she reluctantly decided to leave this form of public advocacy to others.

In the same year, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) hired Keller and Macy to do both fundraising and political advocacy. The pair continued to work with the organization for the rest of their lives. At the time when Keller’s hopes to live as a writer and political activist seemed impossible, the AFB provided her with a purpose, friendships, organizational support, and a reliable income. On behalf of the AFB she traveled almost up to her death in 1968, raising funds, lobbying political In 1926 Keller traveled to the White House to meet President and Mrs. Coolidge. Each Commander in Chief from Cleveland to Kennedy welcomed Keller to the presidential domicile.

(Library of Congress)

leaders and legislatures, and becoming an international star. Keller visited over thirty foreign countries, met numerous international figures, and was considered by the State Department as one of the most effective United States public representatives overseas. She had also, by this time, been awarded a number of honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including Harvard and Temple University. The AFB relied extensively on “Dr. Keller” for fundraising and political lobbying from the 1920s to the 1940s, confident that her signature at the bottom of a fundraising letter, a personal letter from her, or a public appearance could raise large sums of money or sway a legislature.

At home Keller had substantial adaptive equipment and a stable environment that enabled her to live with relative self-sufficiency. Indeed, Macy’s illnesses often required Keller to serve as her former teacher’s aide.

While traveling, however, either Macy or someone else was on hand to interpret and serve as Keller’s personal assistant. Her public presentations blended her oral speech with that of either Macy or Polly Thomson, a Scottish immigrant who joined the household in 1914 and stayed until her death in 1960. To “hear” Macy or Thomson, Keller put her thumb on the assistant’s throat and her index finger on her lips. Simultaneously she finger-spelled into their hands that they might articulate what she did not. Thomson continued to travel with her after Macy’s death in 1936.

I

N THE LATE 1930s and mid-1940s, Keller’s public activities became more international in focus. Macy was nearing death when a Japanese man named Takeo Iwahashi, whom Keller had befriended through international blind circles, invited Keller to Japan. Iwahashi was an English-speaking Christian, the director of the Osaka Lighthouse (the primary school for blind people in Japan), and Japanese translator of The Story of My Life. Macy, on her deathbed, exacted a promise from Keller that she would eventually accept the invitation.

Keller was still reeling from her friend’s death when she fulfilled the promise in April 1937. The trip transformed Keller’s life once again. By this time fifty-seven

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At the time when Keller’s hopes to live as a writer and political activist seemed impossible, the AFB provided her with a purpose, friendships, organizational support, and a reliable income. years old, Keller was emotionally devastated by the absence of her dearest companion. And pragmatically, she had to face the daunting prospect of preparing speeches without Macy’s assistance for the first time. The opportunities of the trip to Japan, however, thrilled her. She took from Macy’s death a renewed and more deeply passionate sense of purpose. She would expand her public activism on behalf of blind people to an international level. In accordance with the teachings of Swedenborg, Keller insisted that Macy was still with her as she waited to disembark at the Japanese shore: “As I stood on deck this morning in the mist of dawn, looking westward to the land where a Great Adventure awaits me, I thought I could feel her by my side.”

The Japanese people welcomed Helen Keller with open arms. For the first time in years, she believed herself to be an effective force for social change. For the

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woman who had questioned the effectiveness and worth of her public work in the United States, the two months in Japan mattered tremendously. The AFB was also impressed by the impact of Keller’s visit to Japan. A leader of the National Association for the Blind in Japan wrote to AFB president M. C. Migel upon her return, “Dr. Helen Keller’s visit to Japan has already exerted more influence than any other goodwill mission on AmericanJapanese relations. Furthermore, her visit is giving all the people of our nation a new recognition of the blind and other physically handicapped groups.”

The United States government also realized the value of her visit. In 1937 war loomed between Japan In 1948 Keller and Thomson returned to Japan, drawing crowds estimated to total over two million. (American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archives)

While visiting the Manilla School for the Deaf in Stockholm, Sweden, around 1957, Helen Keller, shown with Polly Thomson, pets a dove. (American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archives) and other parts of Asia, particularly China. The U.S. stood wary of Japan’s imperialist ambitions. In his public speech at Keller’s departure from Japan, U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Grew praised her work, stating, “Never before has an American created so great an atmosphere of friendship in Japan. . . . She is a second Admiral Perry, but whereas he opened the door with fear and suspicion, she has done it with love and affection.” Grew’s private report to the Secretary of State, which was forwarded to President Roosevelt, expanded his praise: “The extent to which the achievements of Miss Keller, a woman of no official standing, appeal to the Japanese nation has been amply evidenced by the warm reception, largely official, which has been given her.”

World War II put a temporary stop to Keller’s international activities, but after the war ended, and for the rest of her life, Helen Keller served as both an unofficial

international ambassador on behalf of the United States and an official international ambassador on behalf of the AFB. State Department records leave little doubt that the U.S. government considered Keller an effective propagandizing tool. Though Keller never officially traveled as an employee of the State Department, it assisted with her travel arrangements. Embassy personnel eased her bureaucratic and practical travel details and prepared detailed reports on her in-country work. Officials also provided materials about Keller (copies of The Story of My Life, as well as film and photographs) to those internationals who sought them.

By 1950 the seventy-year-old Keller fostered an image that resonated profoundly on the international stage. The postwar and early Cold War world saw her as a courageous, vibrant, and interesting—but quirky—old woman who had not only endured but had conquered blindness, deafness, and the caprices of life. She represented the United States as, like herself, a courageous, vibrant, and interesting country that could accomplish virtually anything. While she often kept her controversial political opinions private while in this role, there ALABAMA HERITAGE: SPRING 2009

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In 1955 Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at a party for Keller, whom she had known for almost twenty years, calling her a “good will ambassador to the world.” were tacit implications. Her message of equality was inherently political, but her image was as a living miracle.

This effectively placed her above the squalor of international and partisan politics.

Keller endured the stresses of international travel because she believed she could accomplish something of value. In 1948 she returned to Japan—now very different from the Japan she had visited in 1937. Operating with a conventional assumption that disability meant incapacitation, the U.S. occupying officials met her plane with an ambulance and tea. Keller disembarked on her own, as she always did, and succeeded in securing Scotch, her drink of choice. Japanese crowds were

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thrilled by Keller, appearing by the hundreds of thousands and totaling, according to one estimate, over two million. She embodied a sense of future and hope for the multitudes who had been physically and emotionally disabled by the devastation of war.

The effectiveness Keller felt elated her, but the devastation of the U.S. attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki haunted her. She said little publicly but wrote extensively about it to friends in the United States. The John F. Kennedy was just one of the many U.S. Presidents Keller met during her lifetime. (American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archives)

As the ship Independence docks in New York, Keller celebrates with a fellow passenger, two-year-old Donald Hart.

(Library of Congress) human misery was more than she knew how to communicate. She wrote, “Jolting over what had once been paved streets, we visited the one grave—all ashes— where about 8:30, August 6, 1945, ninety thousand men, women and children were instantly killed, and a hundred and fifty thousand were injured, and the rest of the population did not know at the moment what an ocean of disaster was upon them. . . . the flash of light that brought mass death. As a result of that inferno two hundred thousand persons are now dead, and the suffering caused by atomic burns and other wounds is incalculable. . . . the welfare officer. . . let me touch his face, and the rest is silence—the people struggle on and say nothing about their lifelong hurts.” The devastation of the atomic attacks strengthened her commitment to international cooperation.

Keller also felt herself to have had an important influence during her 1951 trip to South Africa. With some ties to the emerging civil rights movement in the United States, she sought to bring attention to the racial dispari-

ties of South Africa’s apartheid. She struggled to find the line between criticizing the “bitter racialism” of the country while maintaining access to its leaders. It caused her, she wrote to one dear friend, to dream of banging “her head against an impenetrable wall trying to discover a break-through.” The beautiful countryside clashed with “the bitter sense of racial discrimination and injustice.”

By insisting on paying attention to the needs of blind people of all skin hues, however, she felt she mattered.

Keller also engaged in international travel because it gave her tremendous joy. For example, in 1952, at age seventy-two, she visited Egypt. There she combined activism with tourism, visiting a sphinx and pyramids when not lecturing at American University or visiting schools for deaf and blind children and the American College for Girls. To a friend, she cited tea at the Feminist Union as a favorite event. The Egyptian women were “charming,” she wrote, “progressive in their ideas, with whom it was a delight to discuss various aspects of history and who, I believe, will exercise a potent influence on the higher development of their country.” While en route to Egypt, she assured friends that she would not allow her companion Polly Thomson to climb a pyramid but blithely told them that she would climb one herself. Subsequent letters do not report back on her promise, so it is uncertain if she made the climb, though she did spend a night “under the shadow of the pyramids.” The beauty captivated her. She described it as “a poem… I could feel the silence of the desert, intense, primal, hostile to all growth, extending over the noiseless sand in every direction.”

H

ELEN KELLER’S international advocacy work continued nearly as long as she did.

In 1955 Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at a party for Keller, whom she had known for almost twenty years, calling her a “good will ambassador to the world.” In 1964 President Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for all she had accomplished. She died in 1968, at eighty-eight years of age.

She always remained, of course, the little Alabama child who had sat with her teacher Anne Sullivan at the water pump. But the life journey that mattered most to her— her contribution to the world—simply started there. AH

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C O N T R I B U T O R S & S O U R C E S

FRUITHURST: THE ALABAMA WINE COUNTRY

By Mary Stanton

M

ARY STANTON is a historian whose primary interest is white civil rights activism. She has written four books about the movement years in Alabama.

Stanton has taught at the University of Idaho, the College of St. Elizabeth, and Rutgers University. Her articles have appeared in Southern Exposure, Gulf South Historical Review, Alabama Heritage, Callaloo, Studies in Religion, and Southern Jewish History. She lives in New York City and works as an administrator for the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County.

Sources for this article include Fruithurst: Alabama’s Vineyard Village, the New York Times, and the Anniston Star.

CLASH OF CULTURES: THE CREEK WAR IN ALABAMA

By Mike Bunn and Clay Williams

Mississippi History and Mississippi History Now. He is married and lives in Brandon, MS, with his wife Kym and their child, Sarah.

The painting titled Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians is a gift of The Museum Association, Inc., with funds donated

by Corporate Partners: Ernst and Young; Fluor Daniel; Director’s Circle Members: Mr. and Mrs. Alester G. Furman III; Mr. and Mrs. M. Dexter Hagy; Thomas P. Hartness; Mr. and Mrs. E. Erwin Maddrey II; Mary M. Pearce; Mr. and Mrs. John Pellett, Jr.; Mr. W. Thomas Smith; Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Stall; Eleanor and Irvine Welling; Museum Antiques Show, 1989, 1990, 1991, Elliott, Davis and Company, CPAs, sponsor; Collector’s Group 1990, 1991.

THE GROWN-UP HELEN KELLER: “GOOD WILL AMBASSADOR TO THE WORLD”

By Kim E. Nielsen

M

IKE BUNN has served as the Associate Curator of History at the Columbus Museum since 2004.

He has worked with the Alabama Historical Commission, the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. He earned a BA in history from Faulkner University and MA’s in history and higher education administration from the University of Alabama. Bunn has authored numerous exhibition catalogs, articles, and book reviews, and is co-author of two books: Images of America: Lower Chattahoochee River, and the recently released Battle for the Southern Frontier: The Creek War and the War of 1812, which was co-authored with Clay Williams. He was recently named to the Board of Directors of the Historic Chattahoochee Commission. Mike and his wife, Tonya, live in Columbus.

CLAY WILLIAMS graduated from Mississippi State University with a BA in political science (1993) and a MA in history and public policy administration (1995). From March 1999 to August 2005, Clay served as director of exhibits at the Old Capitol Museum of Mississippi History. In January 2006, he began serving as project liaison for the Old Capitol Restoration, and he was appointed director of the Old Capitol Museum in 2008. His writings have appeared in the Journal of

H

ISTORIAN KIM E. NIELSEN is an awardwinning educator and the author of many books.

These include The Radical Lives of Helen Keller and, most recently, Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller. She also edited Helen Keller: Selected Writings.

Nielsen lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she is professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay.

“THE SATANIC STORM KING”: ALABAMA’S 1932 TORNADO OUTBREAK

By Katie Cole

K

ATIE COLE is a native of Eufaula, Alabama. She holds a BA in English and a MA in journalism, both from the University of Alabama, where she also worked as a writing instructor and a research assistant. A threeyear veteran of the Alabama Heritage editorial team, Cole also wrote “Buford Boone: The Price for Peace,” which appeared in issue no. 85 of the magazine. She would like to thank Dr. Kim Bissell, Dr. Matthew Bunker, Dr. Meg Lamme, Camille Elebash, and Mollie Baker for their help developing this article. Readers with stories or images of the 1932 tornadoes can contact the author at cole031@gmail.com.

Please visit www.AlabamaHeritage.com for extended information about our articles and their authors.

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