We expect that his­to­ries of famous fig­ures will prune their lives, sand down rough edges, rewrite and revise awk­ward and incon­ve­nient facts. What we may not expect – at least in the U.S. – is that decades of a famous person’s life will be redact­ed from the record. This is essen­tial­ly what hap­pened, how­ev­er, to the biog­ra­phy of Helen Keller even before her death in 1968. Per­haps the main offend­er remains play­wright William Gibson’s 1957 The Mir­a­cle Work­er, adapt­ed from the 1903 auto­bi­og­ra­phy she wrote at 23. Osten­si­bly about Keller, the sto­ry cen­ters instead, begin­ning with its title, on her teacher, Anne Sul­li­van.

The play (and 1962 film with Anne Ban­croft and Pat­ty Duke repris­ing their stage parts), por­trays Keller as a child, a role she was per­pet­u­al­ly assigned by her crit­ics through­out her adult life. She authored and pub­lished 14 books and dozens of essays dur­ing her 87 years, deliv­ered hun­dreds of speech­es, and main­tained a friend­ship and cor­re­spon­dence with many impor­tant fig­ures of the day. But in addi­tion to the usu­al sex­ism, she had to con­tend with those who thought her dis­abil­i­ty ren­dered her unfit to express opin­ions on mat­ters such as pol­i­tics. They asked that she “con­fine my activ­i­ties to social ser­vice and the blind,” she wrote in a sar­don­ic reply.

Keller’s polit­i­cal vision was writ­ten off as “a Utopi­an dream, and one who seri­ous­ly con­tem­plates its real­iza­tion indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.” What did she see in her mind that made crit­ics rush to belit­tle her? An end to war and Jim Crow; wom­en’s suf­frage, labor rights; an end to pover­ty and the pre­ventable child­hood ill­ness­es it engen­dered.… In a word, Helen Keller was a social­ist — and a pub­licly com­mit­ted one. “That we know so lit­tle of her avowed social­ism is aston­ish­ing, because she was an extro­vert­ed fire­brand who deliv­ered hun­dreds of rad­i­cal speech­es dur­ing” — writes Eileen Jones at Jacobin, quot­ing the 2020 doc­u­men­tary Her Social­ist Smile — “ ‘a fifty-year run on the lec­ture cir­cuit.’ ”

Keller pub­lished fre­quent arti­cles on the new­ly formed Sovi­et Union, Eugene Debs and the IWW (includ­ing “Why I Became an IWW” in 1916), and “Why Men Need Woman Suf­frage” (in 1913). “Turn­ing the yel­low­ing pages of rad­i­cal news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines from 1910 to the ear­ly 1920’s,” writes his­to­ri­an Philip Fon­er in an intro­duc­tion to her col­lect­ed social­ist writ­ings, “one fre­quent­ly finds the name Helen Keller beneath speech­es, arti­cles, and let­ters deal­ing with major social ques­tions of the era. The vision which runs through most of these writ­ings is the vision of social­ism.”

Mark Twain may have been the first to call Anne Sul­li­van a “mir­a­cle work­er” and Keller “a mir­a­cle,” but he treat­ed Keller “not as a freak,” she wrote, but as an equal and shared many of her views. He helped fund her edu­ca­tion at Rad­cliffe Col­lege (then a part of Har­vard ) and encour­aged her to speak and pub­lish. Keller joined the social­ist par­ty at age 29, in 1909, and in 1912, she pub­lished an arti­cle in The New York Call titled “How I Became a Social­ist.” The answer, she writes: “by read­ing.” As would be the case through­out her life, Keller felt the need to take a defen­sive pos­ture: crit­ics had accused John and Anne Macy (for­mer­ly Sul­li­van) of cor­rupt­ing her, to which she replied that she nei­ther shared Mr. Macy’s pro­pa­gan­dis­tic vari­ety of Marx­ism nor did Mrs. Macy share either of their views.

Keller’s polit­i­cal writ­ing is now wide­ly avail­able thanks to the inter­net, and can no longer be sup­pressed by edu­ca­tors who want to use her child­hood and dis­abil­i­ty but ignore most of her adult life. Even stu­dents watch­ing the PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters doc­u­men­tary Becom­ing Helen Keller (see clip at the top) will learn that, gasp, yes, she was a social­ist. Dig deep­er, and they’ll find her views were unique and sig­nif­i­cant to the U.S. left: Kei­th Rosen­thal writes at Inter­na­tion­al Social­ist Review:

She was a seri­ous polit­i­cal thinker who made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions in the fields of social­ist the­o­ry and prac­tice.… [S]he was a pio­neer in point­ing the way toward a Marx­ist under­stand­ing of dis­abil­i­ty oppres­sion and liberation—this real­i­ty has been over­looked and cen­sored. The mytho­log­i­cal Helen Keller that we are famil­iar with has apt­ly been described as a sort of “plas­ter saint;” a hol­low, emp­ty ves­sel who is lit­tle more than an apo­lit­i­cal sym­bol for per­se­ver­ance and per­son­al tri­umph.

Get to know the real Helen Keller — or a seri­ous­ly over­looked (at least) side of her life — in her polit­i­cal writ­ings here, here, and here and watch a video intro­duc­tion to her pol­i­tics by His­tor­i­cal­ly Fan­tas­tic fur­ther up.

via Jacobin

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A New Mas­sive Helen Keller Archive Gets Launched: Take a Dig­i­tal Look at Her Pho­tos, Let­ters, Speech­es, Polit­i­cal Writ­ings & More

Watch Helen Keller & Teacher Annie Sul­li­van Demon­strate How Helen Learned to Speak (1930)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

As some­one who had mas­tered radio, film, and stage at such a young age, it shouldn’t be a sur­prise that Orson Welles once flirt­ed with the idea of run­ning for office. It nev­er hap­pened, but Welles got pret­ty close in 1944 by ghost-writ­ing speech­es for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s re-elec­tion cam­paign. This in-depth arti­cle at Smith­son­ian by Erick Trick­ey goes into greater detail about this mix of enter­tain­ment and pol­i­tics, and shows how both have always influ­enced each oth­er.

In the final four months of 1944, Amer­i­ca was still at war with Japan and Ger­many, and Roo­sevelt was seek­ing an unprece­dent­ed fourth term to bring the war to a close. Roosevelt’s Repub­li­can chal­lenger Thomas Dewey ques­tioned the ail­ing president’s sta­mi­na and well­ness for the job, along with accu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence.

Welles was still Hollywood’s gold­en boy, with a career that had tak­en off dur­ing Roosevelt’s sec­ond term with his infa­mous War of the Worlds radio play, pick­ing up on America’s pre-war para­noia. It had con­tin­ued through 1941’s Cit­i­zen Kane and its thin­ly veiled attack on William Ran­dolph Hearst and oth­er oli­garchs. Welles’ voice car­ried author­i­ty and grav­i­tas. He was also mar­ried to Rita Hay­worth at the time, and enjoy­ing the upside of Hol­ly­wood suc­cess.

Roo­sevelt engaged the left-wing Welles in the last month of the cam­paign and soon the actor was trav­el­ing the coun­try and deliv­er­ing speech­es at ral­lies for FDR. In one stop he called Repub­li­cans “the par­ti­sans of priv­i­lege, the cham­pi­ons of monop­oly, the old oppo­nents of lib­er­ty, the deter­mined adver­saries of the small busi­ness and the small farm.”

Welles also sup­plied ideas and jokes for FDR’s speech­es. When Dewey and oth­er Repub­li­cans attacked FDR’s dog Fala, Welles’ penned this: “Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my fam­i­ly doesn’t resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scot­tie, as soon as he learned that the Repub­li­can fic­tion writ­ers, in Con­gress and out, had con­coct­ed a sto­ry that I had left him behind on the Aleut­ian Islands and had sent a destroy­er back to find him — at a cost to the tax­pay­ers of 2 or 3 or 8 or $20 mil­lion — his Scotch soul was furi­ous. He has not been the same dog since.”

The Amer­i­can pub­lic seemed to agree that going after a pet was a bit too much. The nation­al­ly broad­cast speech turned FDR’s for­tunes around. And at FDR’s final ral­ly at Fen­way Park in Boston, the pres­i­dent intro­duced both Welles (“The Dra­mat­ic Voice”) and Frank Sina­tra (“The Voice”). Welles spoke out against GOP elit­ism: “By free enter­prise they want exclu­sive right to free­dom. They are stu­pid enough to think that a few can enjoy pros­per­i­ty at the expense of the rest.”

Days lat­er, FDR won 53 per­cent of the pop­u­lar vote and took the elec­toral col­lege, 432–99. In one sense though, Dewey’s attacks on FDR’s health were found­ed: Roo­sevelt died five months lat­er on April 12, 1945.

FDR had writ­ten to Welles to thank him for the ral­ly, but also wrote about that April’s meet­ing of the Unit­ed Nations. The man had the weight of the free world upon his shoul­ders, and Welles felt it. The artist wrote a eulo­gy for FDR for the New York Post:

Des­per­ate­ly we need his courage and his skill and wis­dom and his great heart. He moved ahead of us show­ing a way into the future. If we lose that way, or fall beside it, we have lost him indeed. Our tears would mock him who nev­er wept except when he could do no more than weep. If we despair. because he’s gone — he who stood against despair — he had as well nev­er have lived, he who lived so great­ly.

You can read it online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

Rare Video Shows FDR Walk­ing: Filmed at the 1937 All-Star Game

When Amer­i­can Financiers and Busi­ness Lead­ers Plot­ted to Over­throw Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and Install a Fas­cist Gov­ern­ment in the U.S. (1933)

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (RIP)

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.