Helen Keller
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LearningTranscript
00:00Yes, it's water, I know!
00:13Dear Tim and Moby,
00:17Why was Helen Keller so famous?
00:20From Elena
00:22Helen Keller was a deaf and blind woman who overcame her disabilities
00:25to become an accomplished author and activist.
00:30Well, if you'll stop splashing me for a minute, I'll tell you.
00:34Helen Keller was born in a small town in Alabama in 1880.
00:39A serious illness left her permanently deaf and blind at only 19 months old.
00:45Well, doctors couldn't really figure out what the illness was.
00:49But it left Helen terrified and confused.
00:53She couldn't understand what was going on around her, and she couldn't express her feelings.
00:58It was like she was trapped in a prison of darkness and silence.
01:02She reacted like any scared kid would, with temper tantrums and outbursts.
01:07Her mother tried to find a tutor who could help Helen learn to get along in the world.
01:12Eventually, she found a young woman named Annie Sullivan.
01:16Sullivan had had a tough childhood of her own.
01:19She lost most of her eyesight at age 5, and she and her brother grew up in a state home for orphans.
01:25But she got a good education at a school for the blind in Massachusetts.
01:30When she went down to Alabama, she was just 20 years old, and young Helen was only 6.
01:35At first, things were rough.
01:38Sometimes Sullivan had to physically fight Helen to get her to behave.
01:42But she also spent time teaching her the manual alphabet.
01:47Well, basically, she would use her fingers to spell letters out onto Helen's palm.
01:52One day, the two were outside, at a water pump.
01:56Sullivan was pumping water onto Helen's hands and spelling the word water onto the other.
02:01All of a sudden, something clicked in Helen's mind.
02:05She understood the connection between the word water and the water itself.
02:10Once she began to understand words, Helen could start understanding the world around her.
02:15Just a few days after the incident at the water pump, she learned 30 new words in just a few hours.
02:21Soon, Sullivan taught her how to read, first with raised letters,
02:25and then with Braille, a writing system for the blind made up of raised dots.
02:29Keller even learned to type, both on Braille and regular typewriters.
02:35Sullivan became Keller's constant companion and teacher.
02:39Together, they continued Keller's education at schools in Massachusetts and New York City.
02:44And in 1904, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe College,
02:48becoming the first deaf and blind person ever to graduate from a university.
02:54Yeah, but it's nothing compared to what happened next.
02:57Helen Keller became a celebrated author.
03:00Over a lifetime, she wrote 12 books and numerous magazine articles.
03:04Eventually, she learned to read and write in five languages.
03:08Keller and Sullivan toured the world, telling their story, giving lectures, and answering questions about their lives.
03:14Sullivan passed away in 1936, but Keller kept on going.
03:19What did she do? Well, quite a bit.
03:22She visited 39 countries and befriended kings, queens, presidents, artists, writers, and activists along the way.
03:30Everywhere Keller went, she raised money on behalf of causes that helped the disabled
03:35and raised awareness of the hardships faced by blind and deaf people.
03:39She was politically active and wrote, lectured, and campaigned against social inequality.
03:44By the time of her death in 1968, Helen Keller was one of America's most famous people.
03:50She came to symbolize the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.
03:55After all, if a woman who'd been deaf and blind since childhood could accomplish so much, well, so could anybody.
04:02Arrgh!