Did you know?

We've all heard the human interest story about Helen Keller: water pump, fingerspelling, etc. But there's more to her story.

Newspapers liked to pat her on the head for her work with the blind, but things changed when she voiced a political opinion. When she started advocating socialism, the Brooklyn Eagle editorialized that her "mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development."

Keller responded:
The Eagle and I are at war. I hate the system which it represents, apologizes for and upholds. When it fights back, let it fight fair. Let it attack my ideas and oppose the aims and arguments of Socialism. It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear. I can read. I can read all the socialist books I have time for in English, German and French. If the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle should read some of them, he might be a wiser man and make a better newspaper. If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness.

Dear Ms. Keller,
You're my hero.