[Nfb-history] What Is The Real Historical Context With Helen Keller vis-à-vis The Federation?

[Kane Brolin]

Hi, there.  Not at all attempting to stir a hornet's nest, but I am
truly curious about this--mostly because I am approached on a regular
basis by sighted folks out there in the integrated world who make
reference to Helen Keller, whom I am vaguely but not intimately
familiar with.


I am a relatively new chapter president, in an area of the country
which did not have any direct NFB coverage for a couple of decades
prior to 2012.  So I find that a lot of people--even blind folks--are
somewhat open-minded, but not at all indoctrinated yet into either
Federation philosophy or the more custodial "blindness professional"
model of looking at our shared characteristic.  So I get lots of
questions on all fronts, especially from senior individuals.

On March 3 of this year, I happened to find myself at the Jernigan
Institute taking part in a group activity.  On that same day, I
received a Tweet notification from the Perkins School, whose feed I
monitor just to hear about what other things are going on in the
blindness community that someday might come up in a question I
receive.  Perkins was making a big deal about March 3 being the
momentous anniversary of the day when Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan
met.  To the Perkins School's followers, this was a huge deal.  In
that entire day spent in front of Federation leadership in Baltimore,
it never came up.  I never brought it up either, of course, because I
intuitively can figure out that Helen Keller was not in league with
the Federation even though she lived well beyond the year 1940.

I didn't think of this again until last week, when I was attending a
Lions Club meeting where someone was being inducted as a local club
member.  The text of the speech delivered by the club president prior
to my friend's induction pointed out that Helen Keller had become "a
tireless advocate for people with disabilities. And in 1925, she
attended the Lions Clubs International Convention and challenged Lions
to become 'knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness.'"
My first thought was "Uh-oh.  This sounds horribly clichéd, and it
sounds like she might have supported the medical model of trying to
cure blindness." But is that actually true?  I know this is how most
sighted people even today--even well meaning ones--would wish to
interpret such a challenge.

But what do we know of Ms. Keller's real-life encounters with or
attitudes toward the National Federation of the Blind?  Yes, I know
she was deaf-blind and not merely blind.  And it was a different era.
But she is viewed by the world as a highly admirable example of an
empowered blind person who became famous and attained worldwide
celebrity, even supposedly befriending presidents and proto-feminist
heroes such as Eleanor Roosevelt.  And she seemed to support left-wing
social movements at about the same time that early Federationists were
attempting to make headway with getting the blind into organized labor
unions during the 1940s.  So I have to think there were some shared
experiences.
Even if she wasn't one of us, I presume Helen Keller had to have
encountered the Federation.  She wasn't shy; so did she have anything
to say about us?

The ACB and AFB seem very proud of Helen Keller; so it would be
natural to think she put her pick in the ground in support of them.
But did Helen Keller weigh in on the "civil war"in our movement during
the early 1960s?  I've heard the ACB now also claims Jacobus tenBroek
as one of their own, since he represented the California Council of
the Blind and the CCB technically was around prior to the formation of
the Federation.  Clearly that couldn't have been true, but falsehood
doesn't necessarily prevent anyone from saying anything in a free
country.

So what do we know of Helen Keller as it relates to her direct
encounters with or comments about the NFB?  Just curious and wanting
to have some historical basis for backing up anything I might say to
respond to curious people in the Midwest who bring up Helen Keller.

Kind regards,

Kane Brolin, President
Michiana Chapter, National Federation of the Blind