Helen Keller Gallery

Tuscumbia native Helen Keller (1880-1968) is one of the most renowned and revered Alabamians in the world. The story of her evolution from a child unable to connect with the world because of her physical impairments to award-winning author and international advocate for peace and human rights has inspired millions. Her childhood acquisition of language has been told on the stage and screen, and she has been honored with an Academy Award for a documentary about her life, the Congressional Medal of Freedom, and the image representing the state of Alabama on its state quarter.

Helen Keller 1887

Helen Keller 1887

Keller in Tuscumbia, 1954

Keller in Tuscumbia, 1954

Keller and Sullivan in Vaudeville

Keller and Sullivan in Vaudeville

Helen Keller and JFK

Helen Keller and JFK

Helen Keller Outside

Helen Keller Outside

Keller with George Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor

Keller with George Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor

Helen Keller, 1925

Helen Keller, 1925

Helen Keller in School

Helen Keller in School

Water Pump

Water Pump

Helen Keller 1887

Helen Keller was seven years old when her teacher Anne Sullivan arrived at Ivy Green in 1887.

Courtesy of American Foundation for the Blind
Helen Keller 1887

Keller in Tuscumbia, 1954

Helen Keller and her secretary, Polly Thomson, are greeted by a city official in Tuscumbia, Colbert County, in this photo from June 27, 1954. The women had traveled to Tuscumbia for the celebration of the city's Helen Keller Shrine commemorating it as her birthplace.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Keller in Tuscumbia, 1954

Keller and Sullivan in Vaudeville

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in 1924 during their vaudeville careers, in which they lectured on politics and education.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Keller and Sullivan in Vaudeville

Helen Keller and JFK

Helen Keller, seated right, meets with Pres. John F. Kennedy in this photo from April 8, 1961. She was invited to accompany a delegation from the civic organization Lions Club International to advocate for services for the visually impaired.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Helen Keller and JFK

Helen Keller Outside

Helen Keller held a deep love for and fascination with the natural world throughout her life. She wrote extensively about her experience of nature through her senses in The World I Live In and other memoirs.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Helen Keller Outside

Keller with George Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor

Helen Keller poses with Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and American-born British politician Nancy Astor, who was the first woman elected to the House of Commons, during a trip to London in 1932.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Keller with George Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor

Helen Keller, 1925

Helen Keller poses here with her Boston terrier, Sir Thomas Belvedere (nicknamed Phiz), in this photo from March 1925. Her classmates at Radcliffe University in Massachusetts purchased him for her after the dog became attached to Keller during a class trip to a kennel, and he was her constant companion throughout her college years.

Appears In

State of Alabama

State of Alabama

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Helen Keller, 1925

Helen Keller in School

Helen Keller, seated far left holding Anne Sullivan's hand, attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City from 1894-96.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Helen Keller in School

Water Pump

Historic view of the water pump at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Colbert County, where Helen Keller learned finger-spelled language from her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Courtesy of the American Foundation for the Blind
Water Pump
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