March 8, 2008
· Filed under Quotable Women, Women's History · Tagged Anne Sullivan, blind, deaf, Diane Tegarden, Helen Keller, Radcliffe College, Womens History Month
“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” Helen Keller, activist and inspiration to the blind and deaf
A severe fever at age 19 months left Helen Keller blind, deaf and barely able to communicate. At age six Keller met Anne Sullivan (later Anne Sullivan Macy), the tutor who taught Keller the alphabet and thereby opened up the world to her. Keller became an excellent student and eventually attended Radcliffe College, where she graduated with honors in 1904. While at Radcliffe she wrote an autobiography, The Story of My Life (1902), which made her famous. Her many later books included The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark (1913), and 1938’s Helen Keller’s Journal.
In later life Keller became an activist and lecturer, sometimes in support of the blind and deaf, and sometimes for causes including Socialism and women’s rights. She also founded and promoted the American Foundation for the Blind. During her lifetime Keller was regarded as one of America’s most inspirational figures.
Helen Keller’s story was told in a 1957 television play, The Miracle Worker, which later became a Broadway play (1959) and then a 1962 film starring Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and Patty Duke as Keller; both Bancroft and Duke won Academy Awards for their work. Keller’s image appears on the quarter-dollar coin honoring Alabama, first released in 2003, according to the U.S. Mint, this is the first U.S. coin to feature braille.
Source cited: http://who2.com/ask/helenkeller.html
March 8, 2008
· Filed under Women's History · Tagged Diane Tegarden, equality for women, International Womens Day, Isis, Joyce Stevens, womens rights
International Women’s Day is March 8th. This is a day when women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate ‘our’ Day. We take a look back at a tradition of at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.
International Women’s Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men.
A History of International Women’s Day by Joyce Stevens
“Born at a time of great social turbulence and crisis, IWD inherited a tradition of protest and political activism. In the years before 1910, from the turn of the 20th century, women in industrially developing countries were entering paid work in some numbers. Their jobs were sex segregated, mainly in textiles, manufacturing and domestic services where conditions were wretched and wages worse than depressed. Trade unions were developing and industrial disputes broke out, including among sections of non-unionised women workers. In Europe, the flames of revolution were being kindled.Many of the changes taking place in women’s lives pushed against the political restrictions surrounding them. Throughout Europe, Britain, America and, to a lesser extent, Australia, women from all social strata began to campaign for the right to vote. There were many different perspectives on why this issue was important and how to achieve it. I mention here only a few of these differences.In the United States in 1903, women trade unionists and liberal professional women who were also campaigning for women’s voting rights set up the Women’s Trade Union League to help organise women in paid work around their political and economic welfare. These were dismal and bitter years for many women with terrible working conditions and home lives riven by poverty and often violence.In 1908, on the last Sunday in February, socialist women in the United States initiated the first Women’s Day when large demonstrations took place calling for the vote and the political and economic rights of women. The following year, 2,000 people attended a Women’s Day rally in Manhattan.”
For the balance of the article, please go to: http://www.isis.aust.com/iwd/stevens/origins.htm
May You Never Thirst!
