Helen Keller Pays a Visit to Martha Graham’s Dance Studio Circa 1954

Helen Keller’s sto­ry is remark­able. With the help of Anne Sul­li­van, Keller (1880–1968) escaped from a “dou­ble dun­geon of dark­ness and silence” and achieved great things. In 1904, she grad­u­at­ed from Rad­cliffe Col­lege (now Har­vard), becom­ing the first deaf blind per­son to earn a B.A. in the U.S..  She went on to write 14 books (a few more than the rest of us) and cham­pi­oned impor­tant polit­i­cal caus­es. A rad­i­cal at heart, she backed wom­en’s suf­frage and birth con­trol move­ments, helped found the ACLU, urged paci­fism, and railed against cap­i­tal­ism. She count­ed many world lead­ers and cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as friends, palling around with fig­ures like Char­lie Chap­lin and Mark Twain. And then there’s the time she paid a vis­it to the dance stu­dio of Martha Gra­ham and gained a tac­tile intro­duc­tion to mod­ern dance. The nar­ra­tor describes the mem­o­rable scene fair­ly well. But, if you want more back­sto­ry and pho­tos, you should head over to Brain­Pick­ings to get the big­ger pic­ture.

Relat­ed Must-See Video: Helen Keller and Anne Sul­li­van Togeth­er in 1930