Title: Helen Keller Family Papers

Date/Date Range :   1838-1980

Extent: 0.2 linear feet

Abstract:

This collection, the Helen Keller Family Papers, 1838-1980, contains newspaper and magazine articles on Helen Keller, family trees or lines of the Keller Family, and correspondence to, from, or about the Kellers.

Call number: MS-2472

Repository: University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN

Aquisition Information:

Collection is property of the UT Special Collections Library.

Access Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Copyright:

The copyright interests in this collection remain with the creator. For more information, contact the Special Collections Library.

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of Item], Helen Keller Family Collections, MS-2472. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Special Collections Library.

Collection consists of two folders divided into four series: Family Trees, Correspondence, Miscellaneous, and Articles.

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was born at an estate called Ivy Green, in Tuscumbia, Alabama to Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Adams Keller. She lost her sight and hearing to an illness at the age of nineteen months, and five years later her parents hired Anne Sullivan from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, who taught Keller to read and write in Braille and to use sign language. With Sullivan repeating the lectures into her hand, Keller graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904 -- becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate college.

During her junior year at Radcliffe she produced her first book, The Story of My Life. Keller published a total of eleven books on her personal experiences, on religion, on social problems, and a biography of Anne Sullivan. She wrote numerous articles for magazines on the prevention of blindness and the education of the blind. In 1918 Keller made a movie, Deliverance, to dramatize the plight of the blind and then supported herself and Sullivan on the vaudeville stage. As a socialist she wrote glowingly of the emergence of communism during the Russian Revolution, leading the FBI to frequently investigate her contacts with suspected communists. She also spoke and wrote in support of women's rights and other liberal causes and in 1940 strongly backed the United States' entry into World War II.

In 1920 Keller was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1924, she joined the staff of the newly formed American Foundation for the Blind as an adviser and fund-raiser. When the AFB established a branch for the overseas blind, it was named Helen Keller International. Keller and Sullivan were the subjects of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Miracle Worker by William Gibson (1959), which became a film in 1962, starring Patty Duke as Keller.

This collection, the Helen Keller Family Papers, 1838-1980, contains newspaper and magazine articles on Helen Keller, family trees or lines of the Keller Family, including Frank F. Keller and Robert A. Keller, and correspondence to, from, or about the Kellers. These are divided into four series: family trees, 1969 (four items); correspondence, 1838-c. 1969 (five items); miscellaneous, 1953-1968, which is contains biographical entries and photocopied photographs among other things (nine items); and articles, 1928-1980 (twenty items). There are two letters from 1838 and 1840, eleven items with no dates, one from 1928, three from the 1930s, two from 1950s, twelve 1960s, six 1970s, and one from 1980.

• Keller, Helen, 1880-1968 -- Drama.
• Keller, Helen, 1880-1968 -- Friends and associates.
• Keller, Helen, 1880-1968 -- Homes and haunts.