Anne Sullivan

Anne Sullivan (born April 14, 1866, Feeding Hills, near Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 20, 1936, Forest Hills, New York) was an American teacher of Helen Keller, widely recognized for her achievement in educating to a high level a person without sight, hearing, or normal speech.

Joanna Sullivan, known throughout her life as Anne or Annie, was eight when her mother died, and two years later her father deserted the three children. Sullivan, whom an earlier illness had left nearly blind, entered the Perkins Institution for the Blind in 1880. Surgery the next year restored some sight, and she graduated from Perkins at the head of her class in 1886.

In March 1887, after several months of studying the records of Samuel Gridley Howe’s work with Laura Bridgman, Sullivan arrived in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to become governess to six-year-old Helen Keller, who had been left blind and deaf by an illness contracted at the age of 19 months. Keller had grown into an undisciplined, willful, and ill-tempered child with no means of contact with the outer world but touch. With patience and creativity, Sullivan within a month succeeded in teaching Keller, by means of a manual alphabet, that things had names. Her progress was rapid thereafter. Keller and Sullivan gained a national reputation as Keller mastered a full vocabulary and displayed a gifted intelligence. In 1888 the two began spending periods at the Perkins Institution, and Sullivan subsequently accompanied Keller to the Wright-Humason School in New York City, the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, and finally Radcliffe College, where Sullivan painstakingly spelled out the lectures to Keller and read to her for hours each day. After Keller’s graduation in 1904, they settled on a farm given by a benefactor in Wrentham, Massachusetts.

In 1905 Sullivan married John A. Macy, a Harvard instructor who had worked with Keller on her autobiography. The marriage ultimately proved unhappy, and from 1913 they were separated. Anne continued as Keller’s constant companion at home and on national and later worldwide lecture tours on the chautauqua and vaudeville circuits and later for the American Foundation for the Blind. Anne’s frequent overexertions taxed her strength, however, and as her health declined, so did her always delicate spirits. By 1935 she was completely blind.

Sullivan was portrayed by Anne Bancroft, and Helen Keller by Patty Duke, in the acclaimed 1962 film about their lives, The Miracle Worker. The film earned Bancroft and Duke Academy Awards for best actress and supporting actress, respectively.