I wanted to take a moment to draw attention to disabled people who are, or were, far more radical than history has lead us to believe. I want to write a collection discussion various radical voices and how they existed beyond the neutered narrative or the whitewashed version of their lives. And who better to start with than Helen Keller.
The ‘Miracle Worker’ and ‘Unconquered’ are both arguably the first examples of inspiration porn, but they are undoubtedly the first images one considers when you think of Helen Keller. The image of the saintly, triumphant, deaf and blind seven year old who have having ‘W-A-T-E-R, W-A-T-E-R’ shouted at her repeatedly transcended her disability like a superhuman woman, held to earth by her lack of sight.
However, these narratives ultimately clip the wings of a profoundly radical figure. It would be no surprise for many that Helen was a keen activist for disabled people, as well as serving as ambassador of the American Foundation for the Blind. It is also unlikely that her being a strong supporter of the suffrage movement in the US either. In 1913 she even wrote about how much men needed the suffrage movement too. Shortly after its founding in 1909 Helen was also an outspoken advocate of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But what I find most fascinating about her is her involvement in the American Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.).
She wrote quite extensively about her support for socialism in various different forms, mostly discussing the impact of how massive cultural change is the only way to truly address the inequality she saw within American society. In her article How I Became a Socialist she starts to address many of the accusations thrown at her by the mainstream press as well as what encouraged her to take such a political stance:
First — How did I become a Socialist? By reading. The first book I read was Wells’ New World for Old. I read it on Mrs. Macy’s recommendation. She was attracted by its imaginative quality, and hoped that its electric style might stimulate and interest me. When she gave me the book, she was not a Socialist and she is not a Socialist now. Perhaps she will be one before Mr. Macy and I are done arguing with her.
My reading has been limited and slow. I take German bimonthly Socialist periodicals brinted in braille for the blind. (Our German comrades are ahead of us in many respects.) I have also in German braille Kautsky’s discussion of the Erfurt Program. The other socialist literature that I have read has been spelled into my hand by a friend who comes three times a week to read to me whatever I choose to have read. The periodical which I have most often requested her lively fingers to communicate to my eager ones is the National Socialist. She gives the titles of the articles and I tell her when to read on and when to omit. I have also had her read to me from the International Socialist Review articles the titles of which sounded promising. Manual spelling takes time. It is no easy and rapid thing to absorb through one’s fingers a book of 50,000 words on economics. But it is a pleasure, and one which I shall enjoy repeatedly until I have made myself acquainted with all the classic socialist authors. — Helen Keller, How I Became a Socialist (1912).
Further in the article, she highlights a collection of common remarks she regularly got in response to her political beliefs:
Mr. Macy may be an enthusiastic Marxist propagandist, though I am sorry to say he has not shown much enthusiasm in propagating his Marxism through my fingers. Mrs. Macy is not a Marxist, nor a socialist…
… The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller’s “mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development.” Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York in behalf of the blind. At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. Surely it is his turn to blush. It may be that deafness and blindness incline one toward socialism. Marx was probably stone deaf and William Morris was blind. Morris painted his pictures by the sense of touch and designed wall paper by the sense of smell. — Helen Keller, How I Became a Socialist (1912)
As one can probably detect from this article, Helen found herself in a truly curious position. As the American press and the American government (especially in the lead up to and during the McCarthyist years) were vehemently against socialism and communism as an ideology and were generally worried of a sweeping red revolt coming to the states — hence the Red Scare. For Helen it meant she saw many of her friends and colleagues imprisoned on trumped up charges, or being put up in front of the Board of Un-American Activities to either defend themselves or to finally admit their guilt in supporting communism. However Helen Keller never found herself being swept up in this. Yes, the F.B.I. were investigating her activities and the American Foundation for the Blind wanted her politics to soften as not to encourage the F.B.I. to assume they too shared her ‘unruly’ political beliefs. But the worst she faced was a barrage of negative press, either suggesting her political beliefs were not her own, and she was being exploited by communist propagandists; or reminding her of being deaf and dumb suggesting sane and able people would believe such political tomfoolery.
Her discourse in Why I Became an I.W.W. is also an intriguing read, mostly because it is rare we are given an insight to the firebrand Helen Keller instead of the saintly one:
“I became an IWW because I found out that the Socialist party was too slow. It is sinking in the political bog. It is almost, if not quite, impossible for the party to keep its revolutionary character so long as it occupies a place under the government and seeks office under it. The government does not stand for interests the Socialist party is supposed to represent.”
Socialism, however, is a step in the right direction, she conceded to her dissenting hearers.
“The true task is to unite and organize all workers on an economic basis, and it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong.” Miss Keller continued. “Nothing can be gained by political action. That is why I became an IWW.” — Helen Keller, Why I Became an I.W.W. (1916)
The closing remarks are especially poignant:
“I don’t give a damn about semi-radicals!”
Gradually, through the talk, Helen Keller’s whole being had taken on a glow, and it was in keeping with the exalted look on her face and the glory in her sightless blue eyes that she told me:
“I feel like Joan of Arc at times. My whole becomes uplifted. I, too, hear the voices that say ‘Come,’ and I will follow, no matter what the cost, no matter what the trials I am placed under. Jail, pverty, caumny — they matter not. Truly He has said, ‘Woe unto you that permits the least of mine to suffer.’”-Helen Keller, Why I Became an I.W.W. (1916)
Throughout her life she was outspoken and radical. Her writings on Lenin, opposition to war, and fellow disabled people are a fascinating incite to a figure we are fed a very particular image of. I am by no means a scholar on Helen Keller, and would recommend people investigate further for yourselves.
There is a wonderful online archive of her radical writings and the documentary film The Real Helen Keller is definitely worth a watch.
