Helen Keller was born in 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama and was a normal healthy child.  Helen later became a blind, deaf, mute person.   A severe illness her doctor called "severe congestion of the brain and stomach" ruined her sight and hearing at the age of one.  This caused her to be unable to speak and she was entirely shut off from the world around her.  For five years she  grew "wild and unruly,  giggling, and chucking to express pleasure; kicking, scraping, and screaming the choked screams of the deaf mute."  Then Helen's life changed forever,  because of a young college student named Anne Sullivan.

Anne was born in Feeding Hills, near Springfield, Illinois.  Anne had been almost blind in the past, because she had gotten salt in her eye. Anne's doctor tried to scrape the salt off of her eye.    In 1881 also 1887, Anne underwent surgery that restored most of her vision.   In 1887 Annie went to Tuscumbia, Alabama, the Keller home,  to become the private teacher of Helen Keller.  It was the best thing that happened to the Kellers.    Anne used a finger alphabet.  This finger alphabet was used by Anne putting an object in Helen's hand and in the other hand she spelled the object's name.  For example Annie would put a doll in her hand and in the other she spelled D-O-L-L. When Helen was older she went to a school in Boston to learn to talk.

Later she graduated from the Radcliffe College.  She was always willing to give speeches about people who suffer from blindness.  Helen was also an avid writer, she wrote three books The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, Out of the Dark,  and Let Us Have Faith.   In 1964 she won the Presidential Medal of Freedom.