In a 1903 essay titled “Optimism,” a Radcliffe College student named Helen Keller wrote, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task,” she wrote, “but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.”
Keller, a lifelong social justice activist and suffragist icon, had to “accomplish humble tasks” from an early age; months before Keller’s second birthday, an illness left the young Alabama-born girl both deaf and blind.
The National Women’s History Museum recounts that at a young age, Keller was referred to Anne Sullivan, who became Keller’s lifelong teacher and mentor. Keller eventually learned to read Braille and improved her writing and speaking abilities.
In 1904, Keller graduated cum laude from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree.
In addition to her advocacy for the blind and her adoption of pacifism during World War I, Keller quickly became part of the movement to secure the right of U.S. women to vote.
In a 1918 speech given at the American Foundation for the Blind, Keller emphasized her belief that women’s suffrage was necessary if men and women were to truly be considered equal in American society.
“Are the political and industrial needs of women less genuine than those of men?” Keller asked in the speech.
In 1920, the same year the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified, Keller joined other social activists in founding the American Civil Liberties Union.
— Celine Castronuovo
photo: Library of Congress/Whitman Studio