Anne Sullivan Teaches Helen Keller to See and Hear
She was twenty years old, half-blind herself, and had spent most of her childhood locked in an asylum. But Anne Sullivan stepped off the train in Tuscumbia, Alabama, carrying one crucial memory: the moment someone first spelled a word into her own palm. Helen Keller was feral — kicking, scratching, eating with her hands from other people's plates. The Kellers had already contacted an institution to commit her. Sullivan had six weeks to prove the girl wasn't hopeless. Their breakthrough didn't come at the famous water pump until five weeks later, after Sullivan moved Helen into a cottage away from her parents, breaking the child's dependence on pity. What nobody expected: Helen would eventually become Sullivan's interpreter too, as Anne's failing eyesight left her nearly blind.
March 3, 1887
139 years ago
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