14 Surprising Facts About Helen Keller That They Don't Teach You In School

Although she was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Helen Keller left the American South (never to really return) when she was eight years old. However, both her parents and grandparents had deep ties to the Antebellum South. In fact, her paternal grandfather was Robert E. Lee's second cousin and came down from Massachusetts prior to the war in order to fight for the Confederacy. In addition, her father was a Confederate captain, and her maternal grandfather was a Confederate general. Those are some deep Southern roots!

However, regardless of his ideological dubiousness, Keller’s father was also a newspaper editor and, paradoxically perhaps, a big believer in education.

Not a lot of people know that Alexander Graham Bell devoted a lot of time and energy to helping deaf people speak and hear. This urge most likely went back to his own mother’s hearing loss. Today, Bell’s work is considered somewhat controversial (he fought to ban sign language in the education of deaf people). At any rate, in 1886, at the height of his fame, he agreed to meet with Arthur and Kate Keller and discuss the hardships facing their daughter.

On their first meeting, Helen said she, “loved him at once,” after he made his pocket watch chime so she could feel the vibration. It was Bell who referred the Kellers to the Perkins Institution in Boston. And, though Bell referred Keller to another doctor, he maintained an active interest in her education. The two maintained a lifelong friendship.

In 1937, Helen Keller and her companion Polly Thomson went on a speaking tour of Japan, a country that often called Keller “Saint Keller” and “Saint of Three Burdens” among a litany of other reverent titles. It was on this trip that Keller visited Japan’s Akita district where she hoped to encounter the site of a legendary Akita named Hachi-Ko.

Hachi-Ko achieved fame for his insane loyalty. The dog would follow his beloved master to the train every day and then greet him precisely at 3:00 pm. Then, one day, Hachi-Ko’s owner had a stroke and died in the city. Hachi-Ko dutifully met the 3:00 pm train, waiting long into the night for his owner to return. In spite of being given to friends of the family miles away, Hachi-Ko continued to return to the train station, sharply at 3:00, day after day. 

Keller had become interested in the story and subsequently fell in love with the breed. When she expressed interest in meeting one, plans were made for her to meet Kamikaze, a puppy that Keller introduced to the United States.

Vaudeville promoters had wanted a piece of Helen Keller from the time she started to make a name for herself as a young woman. Anne Sullivan always discouraged these encounters, urging Keller to maintain a little bit of dignity. Keller, however, didn’t see the Vaudeville offers as an affront to her stature. She was intrigued.

In 1919, coming off the dismal sales of her last two books, Helen Keller finally convinced Anne Sullivan to let her go on the Vaudeville circuit. During her time on the road, Keller was a hit with crowds, especially when she was able to take some time to answer questions from them. In fact, audiences across the country were blown away by Keller’s incredible wit.

As her fame grew, Helen Keller became a highly sought after social companion. She reportedly had casual friendships with Martha Graham, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Charlie Chaplin. She was also invited to confer with the Queen of England and 12 US Presidents in a row, from Grover Cleveland to John F. Kennedy.

More than any other, though, Helen Keller forged a lasting relationship with Mark Twain, whom she met at a luncheon in 1895. Twain was so taken with Keller that he wrote to a friend, asking him to fund Keller’s education.

In the letter, Twain wrote, “It won’t do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a fame that will endure in history for centuries.”

In turn, Keller once wrote that Twain “treated me not as a freak, but as a handicapped woman seeking a way to circumvent extraordinary difficulties.”

Twain once told reporters that the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century were Napoleon Bonaparte and Helen Keller.

Helen Keller was no stranger to politics. In fact, she was an ardent supporter of the worker's movement and the marxist ideals of one Vladimir Lenin. Given that Keller was a seriously awesome (and prolific) writer, she’s the one best equipped to explain her love of Lenin. These excerpts are highlights taken from a short essay entitled, "The Spirit of Lenin,” which  Keller wrote and first published in 1929.

“I think that every honest belief should be treated with fairness, yet I cry out against people who uphold the empire of gold... I cannot help sympathizing with the oppressed who feel driven to use force to gain the rights that belong to them. That is one reason why I have turned with such interest toward the great experiment now being tried in Russia... Men vanish from earth leaving behind them the furrows they have ploughed. I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.”

It's fair to say, then, that she was a staunch supporter of the early-twentieth-century Russian Revolution.