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She lived, as she recalled in her autobiography, 'at sea in a dense fog'. (This could have caused the same symptoms, but is a less likely cause due to its 97% juvenile mortality rate at that time.) The illness left Keller both deaf and blind.

Contemporary doctors believe it might have been meningitis, caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus), or possibly Haemophilus influenzae. Īt 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as 'an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain'. Keller reflected on this fact in her first autobiography, asserting that 'there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his'. One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller's paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland. Her mother was the daughter of Charles W. The family were part of the slaveholding elite before the war, but lost status later. He had served as a captain in the Confederate Army. Keller's father worked for many years as an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian.

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She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson and Phillip Brooks Keller and two older half-brothers from her father's first marriage, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller. Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green, that Helen's paternal grandfather had built decades earlier. Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the daughter of Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896), and Catherine Everett (Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known as 'Kate'. Keller (left) with Anne Sullivan vacationing on Cape Cod in July 1888 She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015. Keller was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971. Since 1954 it has been operated as a house museum and sponsors an annual 'Helen Keller Day'. Her birthplace has been designated and preserved as a National Historic Landmark. It was adapted as a play by William Gibson, and this was also adapted as a film under the same title, The Miracle Worker. Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), publicized her education and life with Sullivan. She was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1909, she joined the Socialist Party of America. Keller campaigned for those with disabilities, for women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace.

Keller was also a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. During this time, she toured the United States and traveled to 35 countries around the globe advocating for those with vision loss. Keller worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1924 until 1968. She was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer.