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Keller (in dark dress) received in Japan after World War II. Photo: American Foundation for the Blind.
Walk into any book store, and you are sure to find at least one children’s book about Helen Keller — but you will have trouble finding any that mention she was a socialist. You would be lucky to find one that calls her an activist, or talks about her adult life at all. Even some books for adults only talk about Keller as a disability rights activist, stripping her lifelong work of its true revolutionary politics.
July 26 is the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act which passed in 1990, the same year of the first Disability Pride Parade in Boston. Although Keller died more than three decades before the ADA, her name is often invoked around this anniversary because her generation laid the groundwork for the political organizers of the 1970-90s who fought for and won the act.