Helen Keller:

[applegrove]

#ResistanceRoots
#WomensHistoryMonth

“The only fighting that saves is the one that helps the world toward liberty, justice and an abundant life for all.”
— Helen Keller

— Shooti (@bambooshooti.bsky.social) 2026-03-15T15:56:26.727Z

[lastlib]

1. I have gained a new respect for Ms. Keller---

Not only did she overcome great obstacles in life, but she brought a powerful perspective to the world. (If only some would listen to her..... ) She was a tremendous voice for social justice.

[applegrove]

2. One of the first books I read as a child was about Kelller

as a wild child learning to communicate with Ann Sullivan's breakthrough help.

[lastlib]

7. I remember reading one too....

but I don't remember the title. "The Miracle Worker", maybe?

[senseandsensibility]

8. Yes, me too

I ordered a biography from Scholastic Book Club in my second grade class. I think there was an illustration of Helen having some kind of tantrum because she could not understand or be understood. All of that changed with Ann Sullivan. I kept the book and read it to my students when I became a teacher.

[applegrove]

14. That is so cool. I just remember the spelling of wa-t-t-er.

Thank God that poor girl had a few years of normal communication and sight, before she became deaf and blind, that Ann could tap into. They were both incredible women.

[wnylib]

6. Helen Keller was a strong supporter of the

eugenics movement to sterilize people "unfit" to reproduce. The goal was to improve society by eliminating the reproduction of people with limited intelligence and heritable disorders.

She did not consider herself in that category because her blindness and inability to hear were the result of a childhood illness, not a genetic disorder.

I think I read that she later changed her mind and withdrew support for eugenics.

At the time of eugenics popularity in the Progressive movement of the early 1900s, too little was known about what was genetically inherited to even decide which people to sterilize. Race, ethnicity and poverty were regarded as traits to eliminate through sterilization.

Clinics on Native American reservations began routinely sterilizing Native women regardless of what they came in to be treated for, but especially if they sought gynecological care. They were not informed or asked for consent. They were told bogus diagnoses that could be "cured" with surgery. The same treatment was used on people of Asian and African descent. Children placed in homes due to parental poverty or neglect were sterilized when they reached puberty. Immigrants who could not speak English and came from peasant backgrounds were deemed too intellectually inferior to reproduce.

It's been a while since I read about Helen Keller's involvement in and later detachment from eugenics promotion. I think it was when she learned how the eugenics idea was being applied that she changed her mind. Not sure.

EDIT TO ADD:

https://helenjournal.org/march-2024/once-again

[MadameButterfly]

11. I think sometimes it's unfair for us to judge people of that time

or imagine what it was like to know as little as they knew, or expect them to fully understand the ramifications of how these policies might be carried out. We have the benefit of hindsight, and Keller once she knew what we have always known, made the right decision. Fortunately, society as a whole learned from that experiment.

I have watched condemnation of a famous family member, the renaming of a chapel at college, and I wonder what we are accomplishing. Unless we can put ourselves in their shoes, in their time, I wonder if we really know what we ourselves would have thought--at lease at the beginning when it was an ideal without the grim realities of carrying it out.

I can't help but see comparison with the deportation of immigrants today. The idea that we can solve problems by expunging ourselves of perceived undesirable people by making them go away. Requiring the ignoring of the human ramifications of such an idea.

[wnylib]

12. My post was not a judgment of Keller.

I was just pointing out that even people we admire as heroes in some aspects of their lives are still human enough to have other qualities that we don't like. That does not diminish Keller's achievements or the values that she stood for and promoted most of her life. She did, after all, change her views on eugenics, to be more in line with her basic values.

I also don't excuse some past movements or views with the explanation that "times were different then than today." During slavery, there were people who opposed it as far back as the colonial and revolutionary period. Anyone with a conscience and the capacity for empathy could see the cruelty of slavery. Same with eugenics.

Hubris allows people to make such terrible judgments as deciding to play God with other people's lives.

I am glad that Helen Keller realized her mistake in judgment and changed her views. It makes her even more admirable.

[MadameButterfly]

13. i thought your description of Keller's position

was fair, explaining the limitations of what they knew and how her position evolved. But your conflict on hearing her affiliation with eugenics reminded me of my family members and college community who made similar discoveries.

I still think when examining people's positions in the past we need to consider their experience of the times, even with something as abominable as slavery. Thomas Jefferson hoped to end slavery when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but he lived with slaves all his life. There were abolitionists who wanted the South to secede, so the North would not be tarnished with it's evil. Frederick Douglass wondered how that would help the slaves. Douglass also experienced racism from abolitionists he worked with, and the abolitionist movement to a large extent was fine with leaving in place another kind of bondage that women experienced. Abraham Lincoln actively explored the idea of sending Negroes back to Africa. Going back further, Benjamin Franklin had to be taught by a schoolteacher that Negro children really were capable of learning.

These were not all people bereft of conscience and a capacity for empathy. They were raised in the beliefs and understanding of their time, with different levels of commitment to breaking with the established system, and without the benefit of our experience. Some of them, like Helen Keller, learned. Others didn't. And of course there were a lot of cruel people in the mix.

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

3. Careful there. Helen Keller was a radical leftist.

She was both a Socialist and a Wobbly (IWW member) Makes me proud to be associated, but "moderates" might get upset if they know.

[whathehell]

4. Helen Keller was amazing..

I remember how moved I was when I saw the film "The Miracle Worker" as a kid.
It's about Helen and Ann Sullivan, the teacher who introduced Helen to the world, and basically, her own humanity..It's still my favorite movie.

[twodogsbarking]

5. The movie "The Miracle Worker" is so good.

[Warpy]

9. His6ory books never seem to mention

that she was a passionate Socialist who spent her whole life working for social and economic justice. There was a lot more to her than just managing to overcome two massive disabilities.

[dawn5651]

10. i was at helen kellers home. i didn't take time to go in to her house but i did walk thru the displays in her garden.

frankly i am surprised that so few people know who she was and how accomplished she was and she never let her lack of sight and hearing hold her back