The Left Face of Helen Keller
Some interesting snippets from the article:
TUSCUMBIA, Ala. -- It's impossible to miss the ubiquitous brown signs for Ivy Green, birthplace of Helen Keller. She's the pride of this north Alabama town. People here celebrate her with an annual festival and performances of "The Miracle Worker" play, and her childhood home is preserved like a shrine.
Visitors learn that her father was a captain in the Confederacy. They see the water pump where the blind and deaf child made the connection that things have names, with teacher Anne Sullivan spelling w-a-t-e-r into her hand. Photos of the adult Helen with U.S. presidents hang in a museum.
Not on display are Keller's membership in the Socialist Party, her letters praising the work of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, her anti-war essays or much about her as a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.
I don't know if this changes much; I've always just thought of her as a person who overcame tremendous obstacles, and that she is still. But it definitely puts a different slant on things. It's a little bit like when I found out that Henry Ford was an avowed, even virulent anti-Semite... makes it somewhat less surprising that the Dearborn, Michigan area is so heavily settled with Muslims. Or perhaps that's just coincidence. In any case, it puts things into a little clearer perspective when you find out a little of the story behind the "great" people of our history.
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