At a glance
- Age
- 87
- Born
- June 27, 1880
- From
- Tuscumbia
- Lives in
- Coolidge Hill Road
- Nationality
- United States
Biography
The words that circulate today under her name come from someone who spent decades on lecture platforms and at a writing desk, arguing for the rights of disabled people and taking positions on the politics of her time. She was an author, a lecturer and a political activist, and the authority she carried was not borrowed: she had been both blind and deaf since infancy.
Illness took her sight and hearing when she was nineteen months old, in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, where she was born in 1880. Until the age of seven she made herself understood with signs invented at home. That year she met Anne Sullivan, her first teacher, who stayed with her for the rest of her life and who taught her language — including reading and writing.
What followed was schooling at both specialist and mainstream institutions, and then Radcliffe College of Harvard University, where she became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a college diploma. She died in 1968, having built a public career out of speaking and writing rather than being spoken about.
Illness took her sight and hearing when she was nineteen months old, in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, where she was born in 1880. Until the age of seven she made herself understood with signs invented at home. That year she met Anne Sullivan, her first teacher, who stayed with her for the rest of her life and who taught her language — including reading and writing.
What followed was schooling at both specialist and mainstream institutions, and then Radcliffe College of Harvard University, where she became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a college diploma. She died in 1968, having built a public career out of speaking and writing rather than being spoken about.
Quotes 6
“A bend in the road is not the end of the road — unless you fail to make the turn.”
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
