H elen Keller (1880–1968), famously known for overcoming her blind and deaf limitations, was an author, disability rights advocate, political activist, and lecturer who brought awareness to often controversial causes of her time—women’s suffrage, pacifism, the labor movement, and socialism.

Nineteen months after her birth in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller suffered from an unknown illness doctors described as “an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain.” Today, her ailments are believed to have been meningitis. In her autobiography, Keller described the aftermath of that illness as being “at sea in a dense fog.” Her frustration and uncontrollable behavior found her being labeled “unteachable.” But over time, she was able to communicate with the daughter of the family’s cook who was two years older. By age seven, Keller had developed over 60 signs to communicate with her family and could distinguish individuals by the vibration of their footsteps.

In 1886, the Keller family asked for a tutor from the Perkins Institute for the Blind. Anne Sullivan, a 20-year-old alumna of the school accepted the position and arrived at the Keller’s farm Ivy Green in March 1887—the day Keller described as “my soul’s birthday.” After a few months of working together, Keller had an epiphany about Sullivan’s instructions. It happened as the tutor was forming the letters w•a•t•e•r in Keller’s palm while running water over her student’s hand at the family’s well. “I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free.”

Helen Keller went on to attend the Perkins Institute for the Blind, William Wade House and Finishing School, Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, Horace Mann School for the Deaf, The Cambridge School for Young Ladies, and Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1900. Her education was paid for by Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers and his wife Abbie after Keller’s admirer Mark Twain made their introduction.

She became proficient in reading braille and in using fingerspelling to communicate. Keller also learned to speak and traveled to 39 different countries—sometimes as an official representative of the U.S. Government—to encourage them to open schools for the blind and deaf. In addition to advocacy for people with disabilities, she was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter (expressing concerns about over-population), co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, and opponent of Woodrow Wilson.

Helen Keller published 12 books and several articles. She was award the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1965.