Editing Helen Keller (section)

==Career, writing and political activities==
[[File:Helen KellerA.jpg|thumb|Helen Keller portrait, 1904. Due to a protruding left eye, Keller was usually photographed in profile until she had her eyes replaced, {{circa|1911}}, with [[Ocular prosthesis|glass replicas]] for "medical and cosmetic reasons".<ref name="Herrmann">{{Cite book |last=Herrmann |first=Dorothy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VUp4uh87_eUC&q=carefully+photographed&pg=PA180 |title=Helen Keller: A Life |date=1999 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn=978-0-226-32763-1 |pages=180–181 |quote=For years she had always been carefully photographed in right profile to hide her left eye, which was protruding and obviously blind. Aware that she would now be exposed to the merciless gaze of the public, she had both eyes surgically removed and replaced with glass ones. |access-date=November 17, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220109211526/https://books.google.com/books?id=VUp4uh87_eUC&q=carefully+photographed&pg=PA180 |archive-date=January 9, 2022 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Selsdon |first=Helen |date=July 29, 2015 |title=Helen Keller: An Artificial Eye |url=https://www.afb.org/blog/entry/helen-keller-artificial-eye |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220109211526/https://www.afb.org/blog/entry/helen-keller-artificial-eye |archive-date=January 9, 2022 |access-date=September 23, 2021 |publisher=American Foundation for the Blind}}</ref>]]
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| quote = The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all&nbsp;... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control of their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.
| source = —Helen Keller, 1911<ref name="Rebel Lives">{{Cite book |last=Keller |first=Helen |title=Rebel Lives |date=2003 |publisher=Ocean Press |isbn=978-1-876175-60-3 |editor-last=Davis |editor-first=John |page=57}}</ref>
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On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town of [[Menomonie, Wisconsin|Menomonie]] in western [[Wisconsin]] to deliver a lecture at the [[Mabel Tainter Memorial Building]]. Details of her talk were provided in the weekly ''Dunn County News'' on January 22, 1916:{{blockquote|A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness", and it will be remembered always as a piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it.<ref name="Koser">{{cite news| first=Jessica| last=Koser| title=From the files: New library is now open to the public| work=Dunn County News| date=January 19, 2016|url=http://chippewa.com/dunnconnect/news/local/history/from-the-files-new-library-is-now-open-to-the/article_c0bd9d80-6056-5e47-b7f5-77887e7a4a0e.html| access-date=March 15, 2016| archive-date=March 25, 2016| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325183451/http://chippewa.com/dunnconnect/news/local/history/from-the-files-new-library-is-now-open-to-the/article_c0bd9d80-6056-5e47-b7f5-77887e7a4a0e.html| url-status=live}}</ref>}}

Keller became a world-famous speaker and author. She was an [[List of disability rights activists|advocate for people with disabilities]], amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions.<ref>{{Cite web |last=McGinnity |first=B.L |date=September 12, 2014 |title=Helen Keller |url=http://www.perkins.org/history/people/helen-keller |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161124195425/http://www.perkins.org/history/people/helen-keller |archive-date=November 24, 2016 |access-date=November 29, 2016}}</ref> She was a [[Women's suffrage|suffragist]], [[pacifist]], [[Christian socialist]], [[birth control]] supporter, and opponent of [[Woodrow Wilson]]. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler founded the [[Helen Keller International]] (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health, and nutrition. In 1916, she sent money to the [[NAACP]], as she was ashamed of the Southern un-Christian treatment of "[[African Americans|colored people]]".<ref name="Nielsen2007"/>

In 1920, Keller helped to found the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU). She traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. president from [[Grover Cleveland]] to [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] and was friends with many famous figures, including [[Alexander Graham Bell]], [[Charlie Chaplin]], and [[Mark Twain]]. Keller and Twain were both considered [[political radical]]s allied with [[leftist politics]].<ref name="loewen" />

Keller, who believed that the poor were "ground down by industrial oppression",<ref name="Rebel Lives" /> wanted children born into poor families to have the same opportunities to succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone."<ref name="Hubbard">{{Cite web |last=Hubbard |first=Ruth Shagoury |title=The Truth About Helen Keller |url=https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-truth-about-helen-keller/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211209195343/https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-truth-about-helen-keller/ |archive-date=December 9, 2021 |access-date=December 6, 2021 |website=rethinking schools}}</ref>

In 1909, Keller became a member of the [[Socialist Party of America]] (SPA); she actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the effects of war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed [[Interventionism (politics)|military intervention]].<ref>Davis, Mark J. [https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/04/06/examining-american-peace-movement-prior-world-war-i "Examining the American peace movement prior to World War I"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191218195550/https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/04/06/examining-american-peace-movement-prior-world-war-i |date=December 18, 2019 }}, ''America Magazine'', April 17, 2017</ref> She had speech therapy to have her voice understood better by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published.<ref name="Nielsen">{{Cite book |last=Nielsen |first=Kim E. |title=The Radical Lives of Helen Keller |date=2004 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=978-0814758144 |location=New York|url=https://archive.org/details/radicallivesofhe00niel |author-link=Kim E. Nielsen}}</ref>

Keller supported the SPA candidate [[Eugene V. Debs]] in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading ''[[Progress and Poverty]]'' by [[Henry George]], she was already a [[socialist]] who believed that [[Georgism]] was a good step in the right direction.<ref>{{cite news |date=January 1914 |title=Wonder Woman at Massey Hall |work=Toronto Star Weekly |url=http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=6485 |url-status=live |access-date=October 31, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101001307/http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=6485 |archive-date=November 1, 2014}}</ref> She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature".<ref>{{Cite book |last=George |first=Henry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kKFQdRePRBYC |title=Progress & Poverty |publisher=[[Robert Schalkenbach Foundation]] |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-911312-10-2 |access-date=October 17, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417175442/https://books.google.com/books?id=kKFQdRePRBYC |archive-date=April 17, 2021 |url-status=live|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=kKFQdRePRBYC&pg=PA262 262]}}</ref> Keller stated that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the ''[[Brooklyn Eagle]]'' wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views:

{{Blockquote|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.&nbsp;... Oh, ridiculous ''Brooklyn Eagle''! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.<ref>{{cite news |last=Keller |first=Helen |date=November 3, 1912 |title=How I Became a Socialist |url=http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/12_11_03.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160329022101/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/12_11_03.htm |archive-date=March 29, 2016 |access-date=March 15, 2016 |work=[[The New York Call]] |publisher=Helen Keller Reference Archive}}</ref>}}

In 1912, Keller joined the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] (the IWW, known as the Wobblies),<ref name="loewen">{{Cite book |last=Loewen |first=James W. |title=[[Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong]] |publisher=[[Touchstone Books]] |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-684-81886-3 |edition=Touchstone |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/liesmyteachertol0000loew/page/20 20–22] |author-link=James W. Loewen |orig-year=1995}}</ref> saying that [[parliamentary socialism]] was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In ''Why I Became an IWW'', Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:<ref name="Bindley 1916">{{Cite news |last=Bindley |first=Barbara |date=January 16, 1916 |title=Why I Became an IWW |work=New York Tribune |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/16_01_16.htm |url-status=live |access-date=December 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210907005535/https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/16_01_16.htm |archive-date=September 7, 2021 |via=Helen Keller Reference Archive}}</ref>

{{blockquote|I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame that ended in blindness.<ref name="Bindley 1916"/>}}

The last sentence refers to prostitution and [[syphilis]], the former a "life of shame" that women used to support themselves, which contributed to their contracting syphilis. Untreated, it was a leading cause of blindness. In the same interview, Keller also cited the [[1912 Lawrence Textile Strike|1912 strike of textile workers]] in [[Lawrence, Massachusetts]], for instigating her support of socialism.<ref name="Bindley 1916"/> As a result of her advocacy, she was placed on the [[FBI]]'s watchlist;<ref>{{cite web |last=Carter-Long |first=Lawrence |date=November 29, 2021 |title=Pop culture and the enduring legacy of Helen Keller |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/pop-culture-and-the-enduring-legacy-of-helen-keller/19378/ |access-date=December 24, 2024 |website=American Masters |publisher=PBS |archive-date=December 27, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241227164831/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/pop-culture-and-the-enduring-legacy-of-helen-keller/19378/ |url-status=live }}</ref><!-- https://vault.fbi.gov/Helen%20Keller https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/bio/fbi-file.pdf --> the FBI wrote on July 1, 1953, that although they have not "conducted an investigation with regard to Helen Adams Keller", their files of Keller "reflect the following pertinent information concerning this individual".<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Pelka |first=Fred |date=September 2001 |title=Helen Keller & the FBI |url=https://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0901/0901ft3.htm |access-date=December 24, 2024 |magazine=The Disability Rag |issue=5 |archive-date=November 15, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241115120851/https://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0901/0901ft3.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

Keller supported [[eugenics]], which had become popular with both new understandings and misapprehensions of principles of biological inheritance. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, saying that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals.<ref name="Nielsen" />{{rp|pp. 36–37}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pernick |first=M S |date=November 1997 |title=Eugenics and public health in American history. |journal=American Journal of Public Health |volume=87 |issue=11 |pages=1767–1772 |doi=10.2105/ajph.87.11.1767 |pmc=1381159 |pmid=9366633}}</ref> Keller also expressed concerns about [[human overpopulation]].<ref name="pmquotes">{{Cite web |title=Quotes |url=https://www.populationmatters.org/making-case/quotations/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150703161518/http://www.populationmatters.org/making-case/quotations/ |archive-date=July 3, 2015 |access-date=July 3, 2014 |publisher=[[Population Matters]]}}</ref><ref name="wpbquotes">{{Cite web |title=Quotes |url=http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/quotes |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714224959/http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/quotes |archive-date=July 14, 2014 |access-date=July 3, 2014 |publisher=World Population Balance}}</ref>{{unreliable source?|date=March 2019}} From 1946 to 1957, Keller visited 35 countries.<ref>[http://www.afb.org/info/about-us/helen-keller/biography-and-chronology/biography/1235 "Helen Keller Biography"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170725182850/http://www.afb.org/info/about-us/helen-keller/biography-and-chronology/biography/1235 |date=July 25, 2017 }}. American Foundation for the Blind (AFB.org). Retrieved March 31, 2020.</ref> In 1948, she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools in [[Christchurch]] and [[Auckland]]. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://deafsocietyofcanterbury.co.nz/who-we-are/history/|title=History » Deaf Society of Canterbury – Te Kahui Turi Ki Waitaha |access-date=September 18, 2018|archive-date=September 18, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918091142/http://deafsocietyofcanterbury.co.nz/who-we-are/history/|url-status=live}}</ref>