Helen Keller

1880–1968 · American author, lecturer and disability rights advocate

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on 27 June 1880 and lost her sight and hearing in infancy; taught by Anne Sullivan, she became one of the most widely read authors and lecturers of her era, publishing The Story of My Life in 1903. She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind for more than forty years, campaigning for disability rights alongside a broader political activism. Less remembered is the stretch in the early 1920s when she and Sullivan appeared on the vaudeville circuit, taking questions from paying audiences — the setting that produced this line.

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