>It’s the birthday of Helen Keller, born in Tuscumbia, Alabama (1880). As a toddler, she became sick with an illness that left her both blind and deaf. She became a difficult child, until her 20-year-old teacher, Anne Sullivan, managed to communicate the letters for “water” while running water from the pump on the little girl’s hand. It was a breakthrough, and on that day alone, Keller learned 30 words.

Keller was very bright—she went on to Radcliffe College, where she became a popular lecturer and began sharing her story and advocating for others with disabilities. She also became a radical activist along the way, joining the Socialist Party of Massachusetts in 1909, when she was 29, and then the Industrial Workers of the World. She supported Communist Russia and hung a red flag over her desk. The FBI opened a file on her. She advocated for women’s suffrage and for access to birth control. She helped found the American Civil Liberties Union.

Helen Keller died in 1968, at the age of 87.

She said, “No one has ever given me a good reason why we should obey unjust laws.”