Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and lost her sight and hearing to an illness at nineteen months. Her teacher Anne Sullivan arrived when she was six, and the moment at the water pump when she understood that the finger-spelled word meant the cold thing running over her hand has been told many times. Less often told is that she went on to Radcliffe College, graduating in 1904 as the first deafblind person to earn a degree, with Sullivan spelling every lecture into her hand.

She joined the Socialist Party in 1909, supported the Industrial Workers of the World, marched for women's suffrage, campaigned for birth control and opposed American entry into the First World War. Newspapers that had adored her as a child now suggested her views were the product of her limitations; she replied that the same editors had praised her intelligence when she agreed with them. She was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. Her record was not spotless: in 1915 she publicly supported a doctor who let a disabled newborn die, a position she later moved away from.

Money was a constant problem. For four years she and Sullivan performed on the vaudeville circuit to pay the bills. From 1924 she worked for the American Foundation for the Blind, and for the rest of her life she raised funds, testified to Congress, and toured 35 countries, pushing for Braille books, rehabilitation and jobs rather than charity.

She died in 1968, four years after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.