The Socialist Legacy of Helen Keller
An Introduction to the Writings of Helen Keller
Many hearing people, Marxists included, are familiar with Helen Keller in one of two ways. Either we see her as the wild child rescued from the prison of deafness and blindness through the heroic efforts of her "miracle worker" teacher, Anne Sullivan; or as the butt of cruel "Helen Keller" jokes. Neither image bears any relation to the actual, politically active Deaf/Blind woman whom that nearly mythical child became.
In these texts, she explains how she came to Revolutionary Socialism after her graduation from college. Despite her reliance on intermediaries to communicate with the outside world, Comrade Helen Keller is fully her own person.
Helen Keller became a member of the Socialist Pary in 1909 and by 1912, she had become a national voice for socialism and working class solidarity. Her articles and speeches take on a harder edge as the war machine gears up and the reformist tendency in the Socialist Party forced a split with its revolutionary wing. We can see her calling for party unity in 1913, and then breaking publically with reformism and siding wholeheartedly with the IWW in 1916 and taking up the struggle against President Wilson's hypocritical war machine .
Helen Keller's work for the cause of socialist revolution continued through the years of the First World War up until 1921. She had been long active in efforts to reduce the causes of blindess and provide relief for the Blind. With the collapse of the Socialist Party's commitment to revolution and the on-going persecution of the IWW, Keller lost her connections to the workers movement and became increasingly isolated among reformers and government bureaucrats who did not share her political perspectives ...
Much more here:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/intro.htm
References:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/index.htm
= new reply since forum marked as read