The Becoming Helen Keller documentary revisits how Helen Keller (1880-1968) used her wit and celebrity to advocate for social justice, particularly for women, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty. We think many in the audience will be surprised to learn about Keller’s long life and career, and how it remains relevant to our present.   

In March 1887, Anne Sullivan began teaching Keller, then six years old, to communicate. Keller’s education progressed steadily, and eventually she graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904. Even before she graduated, she began winning international attention as an accomplished writer and advocate. Her account of her breakthrough into language with Anne Sullivan is reported in her first memoir, “The Story of My Life,” which has never been out of print.  

The famed moment was at the water pump, when she first recognized that things have names. The story was retold by Keller and Sullivan in magazines, on the stage, in grand halls and Chautauqua tents, in a 1924 screen adaptation of her life, and then again in The Miracle Worker on Broadway and on film. A statue commemorating that event stands today in the U.S. Capitol building. The moment is iconic, but Keller’s childhood awakening was only the start of her role in the public’s imagination.   

Keller’s complex life and legacy are legendary, but the meaning of that legend has changed over time. Becoming Helen Keller reaches beyond her childhood to revisit Keller’s career and her deep commitment to social justice. She joined the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, supported women’s suffrage and the NAACP. She worked for access to health care, assistive technology, education, and employment for all as a human right, and yet she took controversial positions in medical ethics debates. The film recounts lesser-known details of Keller’s personal life with Anne Sullivan – they starred together in Vaudeville, for example. After Anne’s death, Keller and her assistant, Polly Thomson, toured the world advocating for people with disabilities. Until her own death at 87, Helen Keller was an icon, among the most famous and beloved of Americans, but the time has come to reconsider her role in our national life and recognize her as one of the 20th century’s human rights pioneers.   

The film is told with archival photos and film clips, interviews with scholars and disability rights advocates. Narrated by Rebecca Alexander, who is blind and deaf herself, the program also features on-camera performances from Tony- and Emmy Award-winning actor Cherry Jones performing Keller’s written words, while actor and dancer Alexandria Wailes provides American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation of Keller’s point of view. All other on-camera ASL interpretation is by writer and rapper Warren ‘WAWA’ Snipe. The program will be audio described by the National Captioning Institute and closed captioned by VITAC. 

Disability History Museum staff and Board members will also be working in the coming year with a variety of partners to bring aspects of Helen Keller’s life in the context of disability history to general audiences and to teachers through a variety of workshops, exhibit tools, and conferences.   

Becoming Helen Keller gives all the partners working in collaboration locally and nationally an opportunity to bring disability communities and public history communities into a dynamic dialogue.