Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know. I think this is a long time coming edition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, how have we not covered Ann Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Helen Keller at this point? It's kind of weird.
Speaker 2: I don't know. But this is the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that's like, yeah, we still got a few years left
Speaker 2: in this, you.
Speaker 1: Know, totally. And we're not scraping the bottom of any
Speaker 1: barrels here.
Speaker 2: No, we're not even dipping into the top of the
Speaker 2: barrel yet. Everybody, it's still full.
Speaker 1: Of pickles, that's right, or cream that has risen to
Speaker 1: the top.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's even better. Pickles and cream.
Speaker 1: Right, But we're talking about Helen Keller and An Sullivan.
Speaker 1: You probably know who these people are. But if you don't,
Speaker 1: just very quickly we should say that I Sullivan was
Speaker 1: a teacher of a young girl and others along the way,
Speaker 1: but mainly known for her work with a young girl
Speaker 1: starting from the age of six named Helen Keller, who
Speaker 1: lost her sight in hearing as a nineteen month old
Speaker 1: from what is likely bacterial meningitis, even though we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure, and it's one of the great inspiring
Speaker 1: stories of all time, and especially one that came early
Speaker 1: on to show to the rest of the world who
Speaker 1: at the time didn't think that people that had these
Speaker 1: kinds of afflictions like blindness and being deaf, Like if
Speaker 1: you had both of those, they were basically like, we're
Speaker 1: going to send you to an institution because we can't
Speaker 1: teach you anything. You know, you can't see, you can't hear.
Speaker 2: We're sorry, yeah, And at those institutions they likely died.
Speaker 2: A lot of them died just from neglect or abuse
Speaker 2: or all sorts of different reasons, just because they were
Speaker 2: unable to see or hear. And by this time, there
Speaker 2: was education for the deaf, there was education for the blind,
Speaker 2: but like you said, the deaf blind were considered like,
Speaker 2: there's just no way you can teach them. And the
Speaker 2: reason why is because the only senses they have are touch, smell,
Speaker 2: and tastete that's about it. And that like they're just like,
Speaker 2: we don't know how to teach anybody by taste, Like
Speaker 2: you just can't do anything with them. So when you
Speaker 2: really start to put yourself in Helen Keller's positions, totally
Speaker 2: cut off by the world or from the world. It's
Speaker 2: just mind boggling and as inspiring as it gets to
Speaker 2: stop and think about what Ann Sullivan actually did and
Speaker 2: then what Helen Keller was able to do after Ann
Speaker 2: Sullivan did her thing.
Speaker 1: Initially, Yeah, for sure, one of the great relationships and
Speaker 1: partnerships of history. Yeah, world history and certainly American history.
Speaker 1: There had been some schools in place, and there was
Speaker 1: one recording did deaf blind person who had learned language.
Speaker 1: It was a woman named Laura Bridgman. In the eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty She worked with a guy named Samuel Gridley Howe
Speaker 1: and he founded what's known as the Perkins School for
Speaker 1: the Blind in Boston, which will come into play in
Speaker 1: this story. But he taught her, and this is what
Speaker 1: Anne Sullivan would teach Helen Keller, something called the manual alphabet,
Speaker 1: which is as Lisa Simpson would say, Tapa tapa tapa,
Speaker 1: where letters correspond to taps on a palm. And that
Speaker 1: is how, you you know, very sort of slowly teach
Speaker 1: somebody language without with them not being able to see
Speaker 1: or hear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they figured out how to teach somebody language just
Speaker 2: through touch, which is impressive in and of itself. But
Speaker 2: the fact that Laura Bridgman had learned that it was
Speaker 2: a it was considered like a curiosity and anomaly like
Speaker 2: this is not like that didn't extend to the idea
Speaker 2: that you could teach deaf blind people anything generally. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we should say that Ann Sullivan was vision
Speaker 1: impaired herself, and that's how she ended up knowing Laura
Speaker 1: Bridgman from that Perkin School for the Blind.
Speaker 2: Right, And let's talk a little bit about Ann Sullivan.
Speaker 2: She had an extraordinarily rough life man leading up to
Speaker 2: about age fourteen. She was born in eighteen sixty six
Speaker 2: to parents. Her mother was an invalid. Her father abandoned
Speaker 2: them right after her mother died when she was I
Speaker 2: think eight. By this time, she had lost most of
Speaker 2: her vision. She had suffered an eye infection, and so
Speaker 2: she and her brother Jimmy, they have no She's eight
Speaker 2: and now she's in charge of her little brother. She's
Speaker 2: blind and there's no one helping them any longer. There's
Speaker 2: no one looking out for them. It's up to her
Speaker 2: to look out for the both of them in any
Speaker 2: way she can and so they had to move into
Speaker 2: a public poor house in Tewksbury.
Speaker 1: That's right, And we should point out she's vision impaired
Speaker 1: at this I think until she was an adult she
Speaker 1: suffered full blindness. Okay, but you know, rough life. This
Speaker 1: poorhouse was awful. There were rumors and reports of cannibalism
Speaker 1: at the shelter. It was filthy. They were constantly just
Speaker 1: threatened and in danger, you know, health wise and otherwise.
Speaker 1: And there was an inspection at one point of a
Speaker 1: state board of charities, and a little teenage Anne Sullivan
Speaker 1: actually convinced them she had no formal education, convinced a
Speaker 1: government official who was on site there to send her
Speaker 1: via tax dollars to that Perkin School for the Blind
Speaker 1: in Boston, where she enrolled and would eventually graduate as
Speaker 1: valid victorian of her class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to get that point across, when she
Speaker 2: was fourteen is when she was sent to Perkins School.
Speaker 2: She lived in a poorhouse for six years. Her brother
Speaker 2: died four months after they moved there when he contracted tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: She'd had an incredibly rough life. Her first formal education
Speaker 2: came at age fourteen when she went to Perkins, and
Speaker 2: six years later she was valedictorian again despite being uncited. Like,
Speaker 2: her story in and of itself is incredibly inspiring, but
Speaker 2: it just picks up from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And the reason we sort of mentioned
Speaker 1: the Perkins stuff because, like I said, that's where she
Speaker 1: met Laura Bridgman, and notably, that's where she learned that
Speaker 1: manual alphabet because she wanted to converse with Laura Bridgman.
Speaker 1: So Keller, like I said, probably lost her her sight
Speaker 1: and her hearing from bacterial meningitis is what they suspect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was born in eighteen eighty. She was completely developmentally
Speaker 1: on track when this happened at nineteen months old. So
Speaker 1: her life just took a really unfortunate turn. And so
Speaker 1: from the moment that she was nineteen months old until
Speaker 1: she was six, she was you know what some people
Speaker 1: might call in a trapped state. She was just living
Speaker 1: in her mind, unable to communicate her parents. You know,
Speaker 1: she reacted very frustratingly, probably not surprisingly, and got increasingly
Speaker 1: violent with her tantrums. And by the time she was six,
Speaker 1: her parents were like, I don't know that we can
Speaker 1: handle this safely anymore. We don't want to institutionalize her.
Speaker 1: So they reached out somehow. I think her mom had
Speaker 1: just remembered, like reading something about Laura Bridgman and that
Speaker 1: Perkins School, and I think this is before Helen was
Speaker 1: even born, and so they, I guess hopefully, put in
Speaker 1: a phone call to Alexander Graham Bell and said, first
Speaker 1: of all, thank you for this invention. This is pretty
Speaker 1: cool that we can call you the inventor.
Speaker 2: He said, bully bully.
Speaker 1: He said, bully bully. And then they said, but I
Speaker 1: know you're active in death education, and I know your
Speaker 1: son in law runs the Perkins School. What do you
Speaker 1: think about our daughter. It's a pretty tough case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was like, this is I think this
Speaker 2: is just the job for the Perkins School. So he
Speaker 2: pulled some strings and that kind of makes it sound
Speaker 2: like the Perkins School's in Massachusetts. Helen Keller's family was
Speaker 2: from Alabama. It sounds like her family was wealthy. They
Speaker 2: were not. Her father was a captain in the Confederate
Speaker 2: Army during the Civil War. After the Civil War, her
Speaker 2: family was left poor, so they were not wealthy. I
Speaker 2: think they had land and everything like that, but she
Speaker 2: was not nearly as destitute as Anne Sullivan. But I
Speaker 2: think it's worth the point that as she grew and
Speaker 2: started living her life, she supported herself. She didn't come
Speaker 2: from a wealthy family.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. In the meantime, while, you know, when
Speaker 1: she gets in to school there, Anne Sullivan had already
Speaker 1: gotten a job offer from Perkins. She was a great
Speaker 1: student there. She knew that manual sign language, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: we should just work here. And so on March third,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six, Helen Keller would meet Anne Sullivan and
Speaker 1: later call that her soul's birthday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Anne Sullivan was sent by Perkins to t Scumbia,
Speaker 2: where the Kellers lived in Alabama, and she when she
Speaker 2: got there, i mean almost immediately, Helen through a tantrum.
Speaker 2: So Anne Sullivan got to see firsthand, right off the bat,
Speaker 2: like this is going to be tough. This girl has
Speaker 2: learned because her parents are letting her do this. She's
Speaker 2: learned to express herself through violence, through anger, through intimidation,
Speaker 2: through the thread of throwing another tantrum if she doesn't
Speaker 2: get her way or she can't someone's not listening to
Speaker 2: her or something. And Anne Sullivan was a scrappy Irish
Speaker 2: lass who identified very quickly like if I'm going to
Speaker 2: get through this girl. That stuff has to end immediately,
Speaker 2: and so they were like, she spent about the first
Speaker 2: week essentially physically overpowering Helen whenever she through a tan
Speaker 2: and by the end of the week had lost the tooth.
Speaker 2: I think she'd been touched many times they went through it.
Speaker 2: But apparently after just a week Helen learned like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this lady's not going to put up with that. I
Speaker 2: should probably try a different tack. And it seems like
Speaker 2: from that point she had gained Helen's trust and now
Speaker 2: they could start with Helen's education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you think about it. Helen Keller didn't.
Speaker 1: She couldn't even figure out who this person was all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this new person in her life, yeah,
Speaker 1: who is now physically restraining her. I mean that was
Speaker 1: sort of Sullowan's philosophy. She talked about. The gateway was obedience. Basically,
Speaker 1: eventually you'll get to love and knowledge, but at first
Speaker 1: I have to I have to sit on this girl.
Speaker 2: Right, you know. Yeah, I mean she's like, she broke
Speaker 2: a tooth from me, give me a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, very encouragingly. And this is something as one
Speaker 1: who's always believed in the healing powers of the great outdoors.
Speaker 1: Getting Helen outside was a very big deal and a
Speaker 1: very good sort of second step because they could explore nature.
Speaker 1: It calmed Helen down immediately, and that's where her senses
Speaker 1: of smell and touch could really be engaged.
Speaker 2: She's later said, Helen did that if you were deaf
Speaker 2: and blind, then out in the sun is the best
Speaker 2: place to be, oh, because you can really feel it,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, So it didn't really occur to me,
Speaker 2: like I knew that this is a really big deal
Speaker 2: to Anne Sullivan was able to teach Helen Keller, but
Speaker 2: it didn't occur to me until I was researching this
Speaker 2: that that wasn't even the first step. The first step,
Speaker 2: like if you're teaching a kid something there in school,
Speaker 2: you're saying, Okay, now we're going to learn the alphabet.
Speaker 2: Here's the alphabet. This is what you use the alphabet
Speaker 2: for to spell words. This is what this word means
Speaker 2: for this right, this is the word for this thing.
Speaker 2: They know that you're teaching them, so they're understanding that
Speaker 2: they're accepting that information.
Speaker 1: That's still hard.
Speaker 2: It is that's hard in and of itself. Yeah, there
Speaker 2: was no way for Anne Sullivan to explain to Helen Keller,
Speaker 2: I'm here to teach you language. Right, she had to
Speaker 2: essentially figure out how to break through to Helen Keller
Speaker 2: so that Helen Keller realized what was going on now
Speaker 2: and could take it from there could start to learn.
Speaker 2: So there was this enormous obstacle before Helen Keller could
Speaker 2: even begin to learn, which was to understand that she
Speaker 2: was being taught and to understand that what she was
Speaker 2: being taught was language, that things had words associated with them.
Speaker 2: This was brand new to her because again she was
Speaker 2: nineteen months old when she lost her sight in hearing,
Speaker 2: so she hadn't learned this stuff yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's astounding that this worked, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: and it's due to hard work. And as we'll see
Speaker 1: the fact that Helen Keller turns out was brilliant. So
Speaker 1: she starts Tapa tap a tap into Helen's palm. Every
Speaker 1: chance she gets, she'd hand her a doll, Tapa tapa
Speaker 1: tapa doll. She gives her some water, Tapa tapa tapa
Speaker 1: w a t e R. And like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: for a while, Helen's probably like, what is this person doing?
Speaker 1: Tapping on my hand all the time. Eventually she's doing
Speaker 1: it so much she learns to associate, like, oh, when
Speaker 1: I get water, I'm getting these same taps. And eventually
Speaker 1: there's like a literal aha moment where she gets it
Speaker 1: and she's like, wait a minute, I understand this person
Speaker 1: is representing a word for the thing that I'm experiencing
Speaker 1: by tapping into my palm. And she said it was.
Speaker 1: She said, Helen's face lit up like it was a
Speaker 1: complete revelation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this very famously happened at a water pump. They
Speaker 2: were on one of their outdoor walks or hikes, I guess,
Speaker 2: and they came upon the water pump and she said,
Speaker 2: somebody was pumping water and Anne stuck Helen's hand into
Speaker 2: the stream of water coming out of the spout and
Speaker 2: was tapping the same letters wat er and just kept
Speaker 2: doing it over and over and over and over. And
Speaker 2: that's what finally, Helen just put those things together, just clicked,
Speaker 2: like you said. And there's a statue of her that
Speaker 2: was unveiled in the Capitol rotunda in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: and it is of her as an eight year old
Speaker 2: girl standing at this water pump basically commemorating that incredibly
Speaker 2: just moving moment, but also incredibly unlikely moment that she
Speaker 2: got it. She just got it, and now she was
Speaker 2: able to start to learn from there.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. So it went really pretty quickly from that point.
Speaker 1: She learned thirty words by the end of that day,
Speaker 1: had a vocabulary of a few hundred words within a
Speaker 1: few months. And by the time this started when she
Speaker 1: was six and then to seven, by the time she
Speaker 1: was eight, she had taught her to read words by feel.
Speaker 1: She was writing. She was composing sentences and writing in
Speaker 1: block letters, which is an astounding rate of speed considering
Speaker 1: her scenario. And maybe that's a good time for a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back. Things are off to
Speaker 1: a really quick start, and we'll see what happens next
Speaker 1: with Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, So, like you said, Anne Sullivan quickly figured
Speaker 2: out that Helen Keller was a gifted child. She just
Speaker 2: had to learn how to learn, and once she learned that,
Speaker 2: she just took off. Like you said, by the time
Speaker 2: she was a teenager, she was reading i think five
Speaker 2: different languages, she wrote poetry, and she was in public speaking.
Speaker 2: She did public speaking as a teenager and what's called
Speaker 2: the Chattaquah Lecture Circuit, which was a movement to essentially
Speaker 2: bring culture and interesting topics to people who lived in
Speaker 2: rural areas who otherwise might not be exposed to that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, to give them something to talk about.
Speaker 2: And she lectured on the circuit. She appeared on the
Speaker 2: circuit with Anne Sullivan as a teenager. I think before
Speaker 2: this though, she made her way to the Perkins School
Speaker 2: right for her formal education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were three kind of big things that followed
Speaker 1: education wise, between what is that like eight years between
Speaker 1: eighty eight and eighteen ninety six, she went to that
Speaker 1: Perkin School like you talked about, got that formal education.
Speaker 1: She also went to a specialist at the horse Man
Speaker 1: School for the death so she could learned to speak.
Speaker 1: And then the third one they moved to New York City.
Speaker 1: So and you know, ends along every step of the
Speaker 1: way as we'll see obviously, so Helen could go to
Speaker 1: the right Humusin School for the Deaf where it would
Speaker 1: continue to sort of improve her speaking and she could
Speaker 1: learn to lip read. And this is like Sullivan's there.
Speaker 1: Tapa Tapa Tapa every step of the way. When she
Speaker 1: goes on the lecture circuit, she's tapping questions like during
Speaker 1: Q and A, and then Helen would tap the questions
Speaker 1: back to Sullivan and she would translate for the audience.
Speaker 1: As we'll see, this would lead to some suspicion that
Speaker 1: it was all just an act, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly upsetting because what they did was remarkable. But this
Speaker 1: would all end up with Helen Keller eventually wanting to
Speaker 1: go to college.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just stepping back for just a second, you
Speaker 2: mentioned how she learned to lip read, and that doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense because she could she was totally blind.
Speaker 2: She lip read by putting her thumb on say Anne
Speaker 2: Sullivan's voice box around like under her chin. She put
Speaker 2: a finger on her lips and then put another finger
Speaker 2: on her sinus cavity, and through feeling what the lips
Speaker 2: were doing and the vibrations the vocal box was making,
Speaker 2: she could discern essentially what the person was saying. That's
Speaker 2: how she learned how to lip read, and eventually that's
Speaker 2: one of the ways that she learned to talk, although
Speaker 2: she found it a failing of her life that she
Speaker 2: was never able to speak clearly enough that just a
Speaker 2: stranger on the street could understand her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like I said, she want to go to college,
Speaker 1: she goes to She want to go to Radcliffe. It's
Speaker 1: the Harvard's sister school. And so Anne Sullivan arranges for
Speaker 1: her to go to a prep school to get her
Speaker 1: ready for this, for the entrance exams and again translating
Speaker 1: all the curriculum, tapping out those lectures, tapping out the
Speaker 1: books like reading basically to her into her hand and
Speaker 1: then translating back to the teachers. She's there every step
Speaker 1: of the way when she gets into and attends Radcliffe College,
Speaker 1: where she eventually would graduate Kuum Laudie in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: four as the very first person with deaf blindness to
Speaker 1: earn a college degree.
Speaker 2: And like you said, there were scoffers who were like,
Speaker 2: what is this. There's this woman who's like helping her.
Speaker 2: Is this really a thing? And like you said, it
Speaker 2: is upsetting. But the amount of study and attention that
Speaker 2: was paid to these too, there's just no way they
Speaker 2: could have kept up a fraud like this for fifty years.
Speaker 2: It's quite clearly settled that Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
Speaker 2: really did all the stuff that they were thought to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And we don't want to get into this,
Speaker 1: but we just so we don't get emails, we will
Speaker 1: mention that, just like this week, there is a really
Speaker 1: idiotic TikTok trend that started among Generation Z where they
Speaker 1: have put forth that Helen Keller did not even exist,
Speaker 1: idiotic and ablests. And so the only reason we mentioned
Speaker 1: is so we won't get emails about it, but we
Speaker 1: don't want to talk more about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good point. So we should say that that Helen
Speaker 2: Keller and Ann Sullivan by this time they weren't just
Speaker 2: famous among deaf blind advocates or blind advocates or deaf
Speaker 2: advocates or anything like that. They were in that circle.
Speaker 2: They also were in academia because they were studied. But
Speaker 2: by this time she's a teenager still, I think her
Speaker 2: early twenties, after she graduates from Radcliffe, they're world famous.
Speaker 2: Like everyone knows who Helen Keller and An Sullivan are.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. I mean they knew the Rockefellers, they
Speaker 1: knew Henry Ford, they had met with US presidents, They
Speaker 1: met Charlie Chaplin when they would eventually film starring themselves
Speaker 1: as themselves in movie Deliverance in nineteen eighteen. They knew
Speaker 1: Mark Twain the book and eventually play title and movie
Speaker 1: title the Miracle Worker came from Mark Twain. He's the
Speaker 1: one that coined that term when he wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to Anne Sullivan calling her that. But all this to say,
Speaker 1: I think that put a strain on Anne Sullivan's marriage.
Speaker 1: During this period, she got married to a guy named
Speaker 1: John Macy. He was a Harvard professor and he actually
Speaker 1: helped Helen Keller write the Story of My Life, her autobiography.
Speaker 1: But they, you know, they were married for a little while.
Speaker 1: The marriage didn't work out, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it probably had to do with just their fame
Speaker 1: and their travels, and it was it was just a
Speaker 1: strain on the marriage.
Speaker 2: It seemed like, yeah, apparently I saw a documentary called
Speaker 2: Becoming Helen Keller. It was really good, but it crushed
Speaker 2: Anne Sullivan when John Macy left. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: Helen grieved along with her. She said it took a
Speaker 2: really long time. Helen like almost exclusively referred to Anne
Speaker 2: as teacher. So she was like, it took it took
Speaker 2: teacher a really long time to basically get over that
Speaker 2: she may she may have never really gotten over it.
Speaker 2: But they they were a pair again at this point,
Speaker 2: so they were in a movie. As you said, Helen
Speaker 2: learns very quickly, like I like being on stage. This
Speaker 2: is kind of fun. It's a rush. She apparently could
Speaker 2: feel the vibration in the floor and through the air
Speaker 2: when and knew when the audience was clapping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, interestingly weaken since through the vibrations and
Speaker 1: through the air when a stuff you should know, tour
Speaker 1: show is forty percent full.
Speaker 2: That's right, man, that's right. But she loved that. She
Speaker 2: thrived on that and it energized her so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she really liked it. She was also one of her
Speaker 2: things was they would demonstrate, you know, how she learned
Speaker 2: and how she communicated through Anne, but she would deliver
Speaker 2: in like these these demonstrations, like inspirational messages. This is
Speaker 2: the kind of message she's decided to take to the world.
Speaker 2: Rather than like get a load of me, She's like,
Speaker 2: you're paying me all this attention. Why don't you pay
Speaker 2: attention to yourself and how great you can be too.
Speaker 2: At the same time, she was shining a massive spotlight
Speaker 2: on how few opportunities the disabled community in the United
Speaker 2: States and around the world had at the time, and
Speaker 2: she was directly responsible for changing those attitudes.
Speaker 1: So by the time they hit the stage for real
Speaker 1: and go on the vaudeville circuit, which is not something
Speaker 1: I knew until we did this kind of research, it
Speaker 1: was pretty amazing. They had a third member of their group.
Speaker 1: Their star risen so much they were like, we need
Speaker 1: an assistant, yea, and so they hired Polly Thompson in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, and they were known as the Three Musketeers.
Speaker 1: So now they were a trio traveling around on the
Speaker 1: vaudeville circuit. They had a three act act where they
Speaker 1: told their story. They did a twenty minute bit where
Speaker 1: Anne had a monologue sort of giving you the background.
Speaker 1: It was almost like a live podcast looking at it.
Speaker 1: Keller would come in and demonstrate the process, like how
Speaker 1: she learned to speak. They would kind of show people
Speaker 1: how it happened, say some of those inspirational words like
Speaker 1: you were talking about and then obviously with a translating
Speaker 1: she would do a little Q and A. This sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like our show, actually it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were using the Helen Keller model of live shows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except hers was sold out with rowing audiences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were performing in front of thousands and thousands
Speaker 2: of people.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: One of the things that Q and A there's a
Speaker 2: list that they compiled, and this list was compiled after
Speaker 2: they retired from vaudeville, so like these were they documented
Speaker 2: questions and answers that they'd gotten. And one of the ones,
Speaker 2: so there's one, what's your definition of politics? Was the
Speaker 2: question one of the audience members asked, and Helen said,
Speaker 2: the art of promising one thing and doing another.
Speaker 1: Very famous, saying.
Speaker 2: I saw another one too. Can you feel moons shine?
Speaker 2: You know, like she could feel sunshine and she says no,
Speaker 2: but I can smell it.
Speaker 1: I saw that coming, So.
Speaker 2: I mean like she was a great wit. And it's
Speaker 2: like Anne Sullivan was translating this. Remember whenever we're talking
Speaker 2: about like Helen Keller saying something or doing something, Ann
Speaker 2: Sullivan is standing there holding her hand, tapping into her hand.
Speaker 2: Like even though she learned braille and how to write
Speaker 2: in block letters and all that, that was still a
Speaker 2: chief form of communication. Because Anne Sullivan was so good
Speaker 2: at essentially translating in real time what was going on.
Speaker 1: Just say it once what Tapa, tapa, tapa.
Speaker 2: I can't do it as good as you. It keeps
Speaker 2: cracking me up every time you do.
Speaker 1: So they eventually get off the vaudeville circuit in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two. So they had a good run of a
Speaker 1: handful of years. Anne was tired. Basically she was, you know,
Speaker 1: older than Helen, and so she kind of lost the
Speaker 1: pizaz for it. So they went home for the rest
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenties. They still lectured, they still traveled,
Speaker 1: they still did lobbying and then fundraising and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Obviously working with all the causes you might expect, like
Speaker 1: the American Foundation for the Blind. Also became very socially active,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk at the end of you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit about Helen Keller's later work as a social activist,
Speaker 1: which was pretty vast. But they were traveling all over
Speaker 1: the world at this point and everyone loved them. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break, though, because you know, like
Speaker 1: every story of every great partnership, it was a little
Speaker 1: more complicated than it might seem on the surface. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back, all right, So we promised talk
Speaker 1: nothing salacious or anything like that.
Speaker 2: No thankfully.
Speaker 1: But you know, anytime you're working that closely with someone
Speaker 1: over that many years, there're going to be some you know,
Speaker 1: it can get complicated. And it was complicated for them
Speaker 1: except with us, Yeah exactly. I mean they were lifelong partners,
Speaker 1: but they were reliant on each other in a way
Speaker 1: that maybe wasn't always the healthiest for either of them.
Speaker 1: Like Helen wanted to get married when she was in
Speaker 1: her mid thirties. She was engaged to a journalist named
Speaker 1: Peter Fagan, but Anne didn't think she should, and so
Speaker 1: she got together with her parents, who also didn't think
Speaker 1: that she should, and they kept her from getting married.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a quote from Helen who basically publicly
Speaker 2: embraced that decision and was like, yeah, that was the
Speaker 2: right decision. She said, love makes us blind.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: She was sharp, she was super sharp. I'm seriously go
Speaker 2: watch that for everybody. Go watch but Becoming Helen Keller
Speaker 2: Think is about an hour and a half and it
Speaker 2: is a really great documentary.
Speaker 1: So, you know, I mentioned not healthy for either of them.
Speaker 1: So Helen was dependent on Anne. Obviously, Anne was also
Speaker 1: dependent on Helen because Helen was the one who had
Speaker 1: the benefactors, and you know, they weren't cutting checks to
Speaker 1: Anne Sullivan. They were sort of helping to support Helen
Speaker 1: Keller because everybody loved her and everyone wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: a little piece of her by helping you know, out
Speaker 1: with finances. But Anne was basically dependent on Helen financially
Speaker 1: her entire life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because, I mean they both made their money on
Speaker 2: the vaudeville circuit and lectures. But Helen's books were pretty
Speaker 2: especially The Story of My Life, her first autobiography. She
Speaker 2: ended up writing fourteen books. Chuck, Yeah, it's incredible, but
Speaker 2: it was a really widely read, big best selling novel,
Speaker 2: So she definitely made money off of her books, and
Speaker 2: I mean, Anne was just part of it. So I
Speaker 2: don't think Helen ever held any of that over her head.
Speaker 2: But she couldn't just be like, all right, so long, Helen,
Speaker 2: good luck. I'm gonna go enjoy the good life eating caviare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, we did talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the controversy of people poopooing them at the time,
Speaker 1: but we should say kind of specifically that like Radcliffe
Speaker 1: didn't it seems like they begrudgingly let her into the
Speaker 1: school right, and there were some snobs there that you know,
Speaker 1: one of the quotes was, we should just say outright
Speaker 1: that miss Sullivan is entering Radcliffe instead of Helen Keller,
Speaker 1: a blind, deaf and dumb girl. So I just we
Speaker 1: only mentioned that because it happened. It's really awful, because
Speaker 1: what they did was nothing short of well miraculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even earlier than that, Chuck, I saw that
Speaker 2: a lot of the people who were the heads of
Speaker 2: the Perkins School were essentially supported a smear campaign that
Speaker 2: they were frauds because they felt that Anne Sullivan's success overshadowed,
Speaker 2: you know, the wor that the Perkins School had done
Speaker 2: in educating Helen Keller. They weren't getting enough credit essentially, right.
Speaker 2: And then also there was a lot of classism to
Speaker 2: it too, because these were wealthy benefactors who started the
Speaker 2: school and ran it and Anne Sullivan was a poor
Speaker 2: Irish girl who came from the bottom rung of society
Speaker 2: at the time. Yeah, so what could she do? So yeah,
Speaker 2: they were smeared like throughout their life. And they were
Speaker 2: both aware of this, like this wasn't like kept from them.
Speaker 2: They were two sharp women, so they knew that this
Speaker 2: was everything that they did was questioned and they knew it.
Speaker 2: But rather than shout back of their critics or whatever,
Speaker 2: they just did more and more and proved over and
Speaker 2: over again that this was a this was all legitimate.
Speaker 2: That's what makes this story so wonderful. Is it actually happened.
Speaker 2: And when you stop and think about what's actually going
Speaker 2: on here, just past the narrative, it's like, I've become
Speaker 2: an enormous fan of Helen Keller and At Sullivan. Just FYI.
Speaker 1: Your stan Yeah, I guess so. I love it. I
Speaker 1: am too. I saw that Miracle Worker when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, so it had a big impact on me
Speaker 1: as a ute.
Speaker 2: I've got it coming up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good. Patty Duke fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Anne Bancroft, right, Yeah, they walk alike and they
Speaker 2: talked alike.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen thirties, this is when Ann Sullivan's
Speaker 1: health takes a turn for the worst. You know, she
Speaker 1: had a tough go of it. She never had like
Speaker 1: the best of health, but in the nineteen thirties it
Speaker 1: really went downhill. She had completely lost her sight by
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, and in nineteen thirty six she died
Speaker 1: from a coordinary thrombosis. Helen Keller was right there holding
Speaker 1: her hand. I can't imagine what she was tapping. Hopefully
Speaker 1: that was between them and she was. Anne Sullivan was
Speaker 1: the first woman to have her ashes interred at the
Speaker 1: Washington National Cathedral. Wow, and was eventually laid to rest
Speaker 1: at the Chapel of Saint Joseph of Arimathea in.
Speaker 2: The in the National Cathedral. That's right, that's amazing. It
Speaker 2: gets even better, as you'll see. This was a huge,
Speaker 2: huge blow to Helen because she lost her best friend,
Speaker 2: she lost her teacher, remember she always referred to as teacher,
Speaker 2: and she lost her her first and probably strongest bridge
Speaker 2: to the outside world. Fortunately, Polly had been around for
Speaker 2: more than twenty years now, so she was more than
Speaker 2: capable of stepping in and being the bridge between Helen
Speaker 2: and the rest of the world after Anne died. So
Speaker 2: it's not like Helen was, you know, just bereft. She
Speaker 2: was just grief stricken. And one other thing too. There's
Speaker 2: a New Yorker article from nineteen thirty called Helen Keller
Speaker 2: at forty nine, and it's just this profile on her
Speaker 2: while she's still living, and it's a really good, like
Speaker 2: just a peek into her regular life. But she fed herself,
Speaker 2: she did her own she dressed herself. She was very,
Speaker 2: very independent. But when she was trying to communicate with somebody,
Speaker 2: she had to have another person because other people couldn't
Speaker 2: understand her. And then one other thing, Chuck, I realized,
Speaker 2: I'm on a tie rate here. But the reason she
Speaker 2: couldn't express herself in other ways is because she didn't
Speaker 2: know sign language, because there was a movement at the
Speaker 2: time that sign language was not a valid way of
Speaker 2: communicating that everyone, including people who couldn't speak, needed to
Speaker 2: learn how to speak. That was the only way of
Speaker 2: communicating that was legitimate. So she needed somebody to translate
Speaker 2: for her because she could never get that down pat
Speaker 2: And like I said, her inability to do that haunted
Speaker 2: her like a great life failing essentially, which is very sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, super sad. There is some kind of kind of
Speaker 1: light here in the form of a trip that she
Speaker 1: took and wanted Helen. There had been an invitation before
Speaker 1: and died from the Nippon Lighthouse in Japan to do
Speaker 1: a speaking tour there, and Helen didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: Anne behind because she was in poorth health at the time.
Speaker 1: Apparently in Japan then about one point five percent of
Speaker 1: their death and or blind citizens didn't were not able
Speaker 1: to be educated or you didn't have access to that.
Speaker 1: And so after Anne died, Helen honored her by going
Speaker 1: to Japan and completing that trip with Polly as her companion.
Speaker 1: They went to thirty three cities in ten weeks, spoke
Speaker 1: in front of about a million people, and the next year,
Speaker 1: clearly as a result of this, Japan started expanding their
Speaker 1: public services for education and their accessibility programs for people
Speaker 1: with all sorts of other abilities.
Speaker 2: You said that Helen Keller went to Japan in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight. She went again in nineteen forty eight after
Speaker 2: World War Two and was essentially the first ambassador to
Speaker 2: begin healing between the United States and Pan after she
Speaker 2: toured Hiroshima and came back and told everybody what she
Speaker 2: saw nice.
Speaker 1: So I think it was like a few decades that
Speaker 1: Helen Keller went on after Ann Sulliman passed. She lived
Speaker 1: all the way till nineteen sixty eight, which I don't
Speaker 1: think I knew she passed away on June first. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of in her sleep. In nineteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: she was laid to rest with Anne Ann Polly, who
Speaker 1: died eight years previous, at Washington National Cathedral, so that trio,
Speaker 1: the Three Musketeers lived together in perpetuity, which is super sweet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is super sweet. And you mentioned The Miracle
Speaker 2: Worker with Patty Duke and An Bankroft. They both won
Speaker 2: Academy Awards for it. It's just a again, I haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, but it's just this beloved story. It's great,
Speaker 2: and it basically ends after she starts to learn, right,
Speaker 2: like she's a young girl the whole time.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah, I mean I was a kid, So I
Speaker 1: can't remember if there's like a coda or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but it's yeah, it's about their sort of early days together.
Speaker 1: And certainly, I mean there's more movies to be made.
Speaker 1: If someone wanted to make a movie about her activism
Speaker 1: later in life, that would be really something, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should talk about that because there's a narrative
Speaker 2: that formed around her that everybody wanted, which was Helen
Speaker 2: Keller was this angelic, pure girl who overcame incredible odds
Speaker 2: and proves that if you work hard enough, you can
Speaker 2: accomplish anything. And she realized that that's what people wanted.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of the part that she acted publicly.
Speaker 2: But this was after she had tried to take the
Speaker 2: limelight that she was in and cast it on a
Speaker 2: bunch of different social movements that she was genuinely involved
Speaker 2: in and like, genuinely cared about. There was a bunch
Speaker 2: of them actually, So even after she kind of stopped
Speaker 2: talking about the publicly, she was still involved in this
Speaker 2: stuff for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, she was involved in the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement fifty years before the Civil Rights era, during
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow era. And you know, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: she was an Alabama kid whose dad was a Confederate officer,
Speaker 1: and they didn't they didn't like her doing this stuff.
Speaker 1: Not not her parents necessarily, but just people and other
Speaker 1: family in Alabama. They didn't like it. They didn't like
Speaker 1: that she was working with the NAACP. She was a
Speaker 1: founding member of the ACLU and also a staunch socialist
Speaker 1: and borderline communist at one point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was a member of the Socialist Party and
Speaker 2: she appeared at rallies with Ann and then she found
Speaker 2: that the Socialists weren't effective enough in defending workers' rights,
Speaker 2: so she joined up with the Industrial Workers of the World,
Speaker 2: which was more radical, contained lots of anarchists, and it
Speaker 2: was like if being a socialist was a scandalist, like
Speaker 2: being a wobbly was like really scandalous, and she was.
Speaker 2: She was a card carrying member. She was also hugely
Speaker 2: into women's rights. She was a suffragist because remember she
Speaker 2: was very active before women even had the right to
Speaker 2: vote in the US and I believe the UK. And
Speaker 2: she also talked publicly about stuff that you weren't supposed
Speaker 2: to talk about, but for really important reasons.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean, who's going to tell Helen Keller
Speaker 1: to stifle you know?
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Like she got away part of a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that someone who wasn't deaf, blind would
Speaker 2: have not gotten away with.
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure, she would talk about birth control and
Speaker 1: public way before anyone would venereal diseases, for sure, especially gonorrhea,
Speaker 1: because that at the time would cause blindness and infants
Speaker 1: when a mother would pass it along at birth. And
Speaker 1: so she was in like the pages of Ladies Home
Speaker 1: Journal in the forties and fifties talking about rates of
Speaker 1: blindness because of gonorrhea and that's just not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that appeared in those kind of magazs scenes
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: No, And there's one other thing, being a women's rights advocate.
Speaker 2: She's she had a quote that I saw in that documentary.
Speaker 2: It was women's inferiority is a man made issue. Man.
Speaker 1: She's just like a T shirt factory.
Speaker 2: So let's yeah, nice, yeah, well let's make that a
Speaker 2: stuff you should know T shirt huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, give her credit, of course, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah dot dot Josh Clark.
Speaker 2: Right, so, I mean, chuck, she couldn't possibly get any
Speaker 2: better than this, right.
Speaker 1: I mean could she? She could have something else?
Speaker 2: I do. I have two things. One, she loved dogs.
Speaker 2: She always had a dog. In fact, when she was
Speaker 2: living in Queen's later in life she had eight of them.
Speaker 2: That's great in and of itself. But in the lead
Speaker 2: up to World War Two, her sure books have been
Speaker 2: translated into German and they didn't like that. The Nazi
Speaker 2: part didn't like it. So her books were among some
Speaker 2: of the ones chosen to be burned at Nazi rallies.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a feather in your cat.
Speaker 2: Heck, yeah it is.
Speaker 1: So she was like to think that we'd have our
Speaker 1: book burned.
Speaker 2: I would like to think so too. Yeah, so she
Speaker 2: was this amazing person that all of this other stuff
Speaker 2: just gets overlooked because again, her story typically stops at
Speaker 2: that water pump after she gets it right. And she
Speaker 2: just led this incredibly full, rich life. What I guess
Speaker 2: she was like eighty years old when she died. And yeah,
Speaker 2: Susan is an a genuinely amazing person.
Speaker 1: I think Josh Clark is a crush.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're a smitten kitten. I am Tapa Tapa Tapa.
Speaker 1: Oh there we go.
Speaker 2: Uh you got anything else? No, sir, Okay, that's it
Speaker 2: for Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson. And
Speaker 2: let me say one other thing, chuck, because it's not
Speaker 2: talked about, like is just a matter of course. She
Speaker 2: wrote her own stuff after like later in life, using
Speaker 2: Braille typewriters. So I mean she was just as fully
Speaker 2: competent person. I'm just going to keep adding facts until
Speaker 2: you start listener mail.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I love your show on data centers. I
Speaker 1: was giving you one more chance.
Speaker 2: Helen Keller was essentially a walking data center.
Speaker 1: People. But want to let you know people working from
Speaker 1: remote locations using IBM terminals actually happened in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and I was one of them. I worked
Speaker 1: remotely from home writing my dissertation in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: My equipment was an IBM thirty thirty computer terminal, a
Speaker 1: twelve hundred BAWD phone modem, a mainframe housed at a
Speaker 1: remote location, in my case at Phillips North America, New
Speaker 1: York City. The software I used was an IBM pro
Speaker 1: called Script. I think I remember Script actually programs like
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, it's like I'm pre word perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm floppy disks right, Yeah, it had to be.
Speaker 1: It was before word perfect would come into common usage.
Speaker 1: But Script was basically using one step up from machine language.
Speaker 1: For example, if you wanted to indent for a new paragraph,
Speaker 1: you would type the period I N five to make it,
Speaker 1: you know, indent five spaces, or for double space it
Speaker 1: was period. It looks like LL two and so on
Speaker 1: for all formatting. If it sounds primitive and cumbersome, it was,
Speaker 1: but far better than an electric typewriter, as you could
Speaker 1: correct anything without using wide out. So it was progress
Speaker 1: in a sense and actually saved a huge amount of
Speaker 1: time for me. So it was long before two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight that people got to work remotely, though it
Speaker 1: was rather primitive. Thanks for another great episode that is
Speaker 1: from Danielle Greenberg.
Speaker 2: Very nice, Danielle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty funny.
Speaker 2: It was funny antiquated, I guess is what you call
Speaker 2: it today, Danielle.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Thanks again, Danielle. And if you want to be like
Speaker 2: Danielle and send us a great email that takes us
Speaker 2: down memory lane in some ways, you can do that,
Speaker 2: send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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