Helen Keller, Radical
(Page 2 of 2)
July-August 1996
by Kathi Wolfe
Upon joining the AFB, Keller began to downplay her leftist leanings because she wanted to help blind people and desperately needed the salary. As Joseph P. Lash wrote in Helen and Teacher (Delta/Seymour Lawrence, 1980), “she soft-pedaled her politics presumably at the request of the foundation. There is no document to that effect, but...there was a cogent case against Helen, the foundation's chief fund-raiser, proclaiming views that were likely to give offense to many potential donors.”
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That legacy lives on. Today, most organizations for the blind are still largely apolitical. “They're afraid donations will decrease if people learn of Keller's radical political views,” says National Council on Disability member Bonnie O'Day.
Despite her public restraint, Keller stayed true to the spirit of her beliefs. In the 1930s she wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt about Out of the Dark (a 1913 collection of Keller's socialist writings): “Some of the things I said at the time are now out of date,” she confessed, “but the spirit of revolt...remains.”
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