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It is Helen Keller who salutes you.
You are not familiar with my voice.
I have written from my soul.
Yeah, well, if you offer me dinner
like you did so nicely, I'll take it.
But if you had said, well, time to go.
Mm, well.
There's no way I can have two side by sides here.
I guess I can, if I take this off.
Right, but you're gonna have to take this off.
Yeah.
Tuscumbia...
"Socialism," she replies,
"I am a socialist because I believe in fair play.
"What active socialistic.
"What active socialistic work are you doing now?"
follows the reporter.
"Talking."
No, "Talking." Helen quickly responds with a laugh,
"But wait till I get a chance, then I'll be doing.
"Then, I'll be doing. The highest ambition
"of my life is to help my fellow men.
"To make them see and hear as I do."
On February 6, 1913, Helen Keller delivered her
first talk before a general audience.
She was 32-years-old.
Though she'd already given occasional addresses
at private gatherings in conjunction with her work
on behalf of the blind and deaf,
her spoken voice was deemed largely unintelligible,
necessitating someone, more often than not,
her life-long teacher, Anne Sullivan,
to repeat, sentence by sentence, what Helen said.
The fact that she could speak at all
was regarded to be a marvel,
as much a miracle as were the first reports years earlier,
transmitted around the world,
that a seven-year-old deaf blind child
from Tuscumbia, Alabama, had learned to read and write.
Speaking to a group of reporters
in her hotel the night before her lecture,
Helen is asked what her latest field of interest is?
"Socialism," she replies.
"I am a socialist because I believe in fair play."
"What active socialistic work are you doing now?"
follows the reporter.
"Talking!" Helen quickly responds with a laugh,
"But wait till I get a chance, then I'll be doing.
"The highest ambition of my life is to help my fellow men,
"to make them see and hear as I do."
Despite nearly two years of private vocal training,
Helen privately approaches the event with trepidation,
regarding her voice, as she would for the rest of her life,
to be "defective and halting".
Once the lecture gets underway, stage fright sinks in.
"I felt my voice soaring and I knew that meant falsetto,
"frantically I dragged it down
"till my words fell about me like loose bricks,"
Helen later described the experience.
At the end of her talk, Helen leaves the stage in tears,
convinced she has failed,
feeling the lecture to have been an ordeal,
"A pillory where I stood cold,
"riveted, trembling, voiceless."
For Hattie Schlossberg, a reporter who heard Helen Keller
speak in 1913, the experience is altogether different.
"I was not prepared for what did come.
"The effect of her first words was startling.
"It sounds weird and uncanny at first,
"but this feeling passes away
"as soon as one gets accustomed to the tone.
"Her voice is indescribable.
"It seems to come from somewhere in the depths of her."
Thus would begin a nearly 50-year run
on the lecture circuit.
As is the case with virtually all of her political speeches,
no film, photographs, or recordings survive
of the first talk that Helen Keller delivered that night
inside the Hillside elementary school auditorium.
She entitled her talk, "The Heart and the Hand,
"or the Right Uses of Our Senses."
A speech she would deliver a month later under the title,
"The Heart and the Hand, or True Socialism".
These were her words that night.
Writing in the "Ladies' Home Journal" in 1907,
Keller takes the bold step for the time
of addressing how mothers, unknowingly infected
with syphilis by their philandering husbands,
were inducing ophthalmia, the most common cause
of blindness, upon their newborn infants.
While medical science could provide a remedy if promptly
and properly administered, Keller writes how poverty,
lack of education, unequal access to medicine,
and overall lack of institutional support
hindered such initiatives.
In an address before the Massachusetts Association
for Promoting the Interests of the Blind, Keller says.
Concurrent with Helen Keller's research
into the social causes of blindness,
in 1908 her teacher, Anne Sullivan, passes along to Helen
a newly published book of essays by British author HG Wells
entitled "New Worlds For Old".
Depicting in detail the stories of children
and workers living lives of grinding poverty,
and incorporating numerous sociological studies,
the book argues for what Wells called
a "constructive socialism" as the way
to confront these problems.
Additionally, as observed by historian Philip Foner,
"New Worlds For Old" also pointed out a role
Helen herself could play in the movement
for a new and better society.
Over and above the promoting of its main constructive ideas
and their more obvious and practical applications,
Wells writes, "An immense amount of intellectual work
"remains to be done for socialism.
"The battle for socialism is to be fought,
"not simply at the polls and in the market place,
"but at the writing desk and in the study."
In earnest, Helen begins to educate herself on the issues,
remarking to a friend years later,
"Something asleep in me awoke
"when I read the radical literature."
Her reading list includes German socialist periodicals
printed in Braille, selected articles from the
National Socialist and International Socialist Review,
Karl Marx's "Value, Price, and Profit",
as well as "The Communist Manifesto",
about which she declares, "if it isn't imposed as tyranny,
"it is one of the finest pieces of literature ever written".
She reads Karl Kautsky's classic exposition
of the Erfurt Program, "The Class Struggle".
Adopted at the Erfurt Party Congress of 1891,
the German Workers' Party program argued that
because capitalism, by its very nature, must collapse,
the immediate task for socialists was to work
for the improvement of workers' lives rather than for
the revolution, which, it is believed, was inevitable.
In an April 1911 editorial in the Matilda Ziegler Magazine
for the Blind, Helen urges the sightless to study
the economic problems of the seeing
by reading two popular socialist primers,
Robert Hunter's "Poverty" and Edmond Kelly's
"Twentieth Century Socialism".
"Not for theory, as it is scornfully called", she writes,
"but for facts about the labor conditions in America."
As Helen's reading list grows,
so too does her intellectual curiosity.
At one point, she requests the National Institute
for the Blind in London to translate into braille
a copy of Mikhail Bakunin's "God and the State".
A book that preaches atheism, destruction of the state,
and the embrace of anarchism.
While the Institute has previously offered
to do transcripts of books for Helen without charge,
its Secretary General draws the line at Bakunin.
Despite her status as one of the most revered
and renowned figures in the nation,
Helen Keller's forays into politics,
especially at a time when women
were still deprived of the right to vote,
are frequently met with fierce criticism, willfully ignored,
or pardoned as being the result of bad influences upon her.
States one newspaper editorial:
"Helen Keller, struggling to point the way for the deaf,
"dumb and blind is inspiring.
"Helen Keller preaching socialism;
"Helen Keller passing on the merits of the copper strike;
"Helen Keller sneering at the
"Constitution of the United States;
"Helen Keller under these aspects is pitiful.
"She is beyond her depth.
"She speaks with the handicap of limitation
"which no amount of determination or science can overcome.
"Her knowledge is, and must be, almost purely theoretical,
"and unfortunately this world
"and its problems are both very practical."
When in 1913, Helen Keller publishes her book,
"Out Of The Dark: Essays, Letters,
"and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision",
including articles such as "How I Became a Socialist",
"The Workers' Right", "The Modern Woman",
and a "Letter to an English Woman Suffragist",
it manages, in the words of her biographer Dorothy Herrmann,
to "practically destroy her angelic image."
♪ There's a winding trail
♪ Through the meadow grass
♪ And over the sunny hill
♪ To the wildwood wind
♪ Where a lad and lass
♪ Were thronged at their own sweet will ♪
♪ A brown little lad
♪ With a freckled nose
♪ And a wee bony lass
♪ Like a sweet wild rose
♪ Over the hilltop
♪ And through the veil
♪ Treading the winding...
Founded in 1901, the Socialist Party of America
was by 1912, an exponentially expanding force
on the political landscape.
According to official records,
the Party had more than 1,000 of its members elected
to political office in 337 towns and cities.
This included 56 Socialist mayors,
305 aldermen and councilmen,
22 police officials, 155 school officials,
and four pound-keepers.
The Socialist cause was promoted by 323 papers
and periodicals, including five daily newspapers in English,
eight in other languages,
262 weeklies in English,
36 in other languages,
and 12 monthlies.
10 in English and two in other languages.
Total circulation of this press was estimated
to have been more than two million.
"The Appeal to Reason", published in Kansas
and always the most widely read
of the Socialist publications,
whose motto was "Socialism is not just a theory,
"it is a destiny", reaches a circulation
of nearly 700,000 in that year.
And, in 1912, as candidate for the
Socialist Party of America in the Presidential election,
Eugene Debs receives nearly one million votes.
This was before women's suffrage
and represents 6% of the popular vote.
A source of tremendous media attention at the time,
Helen Keller's graduation in 1904 from Radcliffe College,
Harvard's segregated sister institution,
establishes her as the first blind-deaf individual
to ever graduate from college.
Even before receiving her degree, Helen's awareness of her
class privilege and unique opportunities is growing.
She would come to describe Harvard as
"perhaps the most imposing monument to dead ideas
"in this country where such monuments are numerous."
Pressed as to why she came to this opinion,
she replied that, "They did not teach me about things
"as they are today, or about the vital problems
"of the people.
"They taught me Greek drama and Roman history,
"the celebrated achievements of war,
"rather than those of the heroes of peace.
"For instance, there were a dozen chapters on war
"where there were a few paragraphs about the inventors,
"and it is the over-emphasis on the cruelties of life
"that breeds the wrong ideal.
"Education has taught me that it was a finer thing
"to be a Napoleon than to create a new potato."
Accepting an invitation years later to speak at Radcliffe,
Helen tells the attendees:
"I have never attached great value to academic fame,
"and I am not much interested in whether
"or not people praise Radcliffe's scholarship.
"What I care about is that every thought, every work,
"every act should be vital with the will to serve mankind."
One month after delivering her first public lecture,
Helen Keller is invited to speak
at the 1913 Woman's Suffrage Procession,
the first suffrage parade to be held in Washington, DC,
and strategically scheduled for the day prior
to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.
Firmly opposed to the idea of women
having the right to vote, Wilson, a Democrat,
takes office characterizing those women who campaigned
for suffrage as "totally abhorrent".
Organized by Alice Paul for the
National American Woman Suffrage Association,
the procession draws some 8,000 marchers,
featuring nine bands, four mounted brigades,
and over 20 floats, who lead their parade
before thousands of spectators, many of them, mostly men,
in town for the inauguration.
After proceeding for a few blocks,
crowds of spectators move into the street
impeding the ability for many marchers to pass.
Women are shoved, tripped, insulted,
spat upon, while police officers either stand idly by
or are seen reveling in the commotion.
For the next six hours, ambulances fight their way in
and out of the crowd attempting to retrieve the injured.
By day's end, over 200 people are
treated at local hospitals.
So exhausted and unnerved by the experience
and her attempts to reach the grandstand,
Helen Keller finds herself unable to later
speak at Constitution Hall.
The following day she recounts her impressions
for the syndicated press,
although few transmit the full extent of her report.
While Helen Keller's recounting of the events
of the Woman Suffrage Pageant receives little circulation,
her concurrent critique of the swearing in of
President Woodrow Wilson does,
even leading one newspaper editor to describe it as
"The most remarkable printed anywhere
"on the inauguration in Washington yesterday."
When interviewed by the press,
Helen underscores that she is not just a suffragist
but a "militant suffragist".
As she explains to a reporter for "The New York Times",
"I believe that suffrage will lead to socialism
"and to me, socialism is the ideal cause."
Mindful of the fact that the right to vote was itself no
guarantee of the fostering of fundamental structural change,
in her 1911 "Letter to an English Woman Suffragist",
she expounds further on the nature of the problem.
Following the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914,
a small, vocal, and highly influential group of bankers,
lawyers, and businessmen launches a campaign to persuade
the Wilson administration and the country at large
that the United States needs to prepare itself for war.
Led by General Leonard Wood
and former President Theodore Roosevelt,
the so-called "Preparedness Movement"
argues for an immediate build-up of naval and land forces
and the instituting of compulsory
universal military training.
With the Socialist Party at the forefront of opposition
to any such build-up, it is announced that on
December 19th, 1915, Helen Keller will publicly present
the Socialist interpretation of the causes of the
European war and the dangers confronting the United States.
Sponsored by the Labor Forum
and to be held at Washington Irving High School in New York,
it is further announced that, "Miss Keller will advocate
"the General Strike as the speediest way
"to end the European conflict."
By the time the event gets underway,
there are an estimated 2,000 in attendance,
and hundreds more who have to be turned away.
Her speech is called "Menace of the Militarist Program".
At the conclusion of her remarks,
the crowd rises to its feet
and collectively breaks out
into the singing of La Marseillaise.
Exiting the school building,
Helen is greeted by a large crowd.
According to a report the following day
in the "New York Times", when "Miss Keller told the throng
"that she would speak, so great was the rush towards
"the steps to hear her that the police reserves
"of East 22nd Street Station were called out
"to restore order."
Helen repeats her appeal for workers not to serve
in the proposed army of defense,
again concluding with a call for a "world-encircling revolt"
upon which there is a concerted rush towards her,
provoking police officers to lift Helen off her feet
and carry her to a waiting automobile.
In the days immediately following the talk,
pro-preparedness groups demand that the
New York City Board of Education revoke the
Labor Forum's permit to ever again use the
Washington Irving High School building for public meetings.
Going even further, protesters declare
"that no organization that lends itself to furthering
"the propaganda of disloyalty and anarchy be permitted
"to occupy public school halls
"in order to disseminate their doctrines."
Helen is quick to issue a response.
Following her talk at the Labor Forum,
Helen leaves for a lengthy lecture tour throughout the West.
Spurred by the impassioned response Helen's
speech received from the audience,
and with its aftermath still swirling about in the press,
the Women's Peace Party and the Labor Forum
jointly reach out to Helen requesting she return
to New York to deliver a second speech,
this time to be held at Carnegie Hall.
Enthusiastic about the prospect,
Helen makes one stipulation,
that admission to the talk be free.
All of the trade unions in New York City
and their members are invited.
On January 5, 1916, a packed audience comprised
principally of women assembles in Carnegie Hall
to hear Helen Keller again speak
on the subject of militarism and resistance.
As Helen takes the stage and advances
to the front of the platform,
she is cheered for 15 minutes
before she can deliver her first words.
Women rise to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs,
shouting and applauding until exhaustion.
For the next hour and 10 minutes,
Helen lays out the arguments for resisting the move toward
increased military buildup
and the implementation of conscription.
She denounces the tactics of fear-mongering
being used to argue for armaments,
and outlines the connections between the banking industry,
foreign investments, and the munitions industry.
"Behind the preparedness propaganda" Helen says,
"is an attempt to divert attention away
"from the hard realities of economic strife at home."
She denounces the fundamental flaws of the system.
She points out that, "the ballot does not make a free man
"out of a wage slave.
"There has never existed a truly free
"and democratic nation in the world," she states.
"From time immemorial men have followed with blind loyalty
"the strong men who had the power of money and of armies.
"Even while battlefields were piled high with their own dead
"they have tilled the lands of the rulers
"and have been robbed of the fruits of their labor.
"What workers want," Helen declares,
"is nothing short of the reorganization
"and reconstruction of their whole lives,
"until every individual has a chance to be well-born,
"well nourished, rightly educated."
She urges for a nationwide strike against war
and weapons manufacture.
She concludes by bidding the audience,
"Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction.
"Be heroes in an army of construction."
In the audience that night is poet Anna Strunsky Walling,
who writes of the impact of the experience.
"You walked forward as if you wanted to run;
"Eagerness was in your feet, in the lift of your head,
"in your brilliant smile.
"You walked forward and took your place
"at the edge of the platform, facing the great audience.
"Impenetrable night was around you,
"though the light of enthusiasm flashed
"from thousands of eyes more brilliant
"than the brilliant illumination of the hall.
"Impenetrable silence, though music
"and speaking had preceded you, and now, at sight of you,
"the thousands broke into applause.
"You stood in the dark of the night,
"in the silence of the tomb,
"a spear of light, a star, a voice.
"Oh, unforgettable experience of my soul!
"When first the effulgence of your courage
"and your youth laid its spell upon me!"
Though never averse to the situational use of force
when necessary to advance revolutionary aspirations,
Helen Keller maintained a life-long commitment
to speaking out against military adventurism.
Reflecting back many years later
on the period of the 1916 Preparedness debate, Helen wrote.
As Helen Keller's embrace of socialist ideas grows
more fervent, so too does her dissatisfaction with rising
factionalism within the Socialist Party of America.
After the 1912 elections, and following much argument,
the constitution of the Socialist Party is amended
to ban membership by any who would advocate the tactical
use of sabotage or violence.
In a debate with Party President Eugene Debs,
syndicalist organizer Big Bill Haywood proclaims that,
"No Socialist can be a law-abiding citizen.
"When we come together and are of a common mind,
"and the purpose of our minds is to overthrow
"the capitalist system, we become conspirators
"against the United States Government."
While many attack the anti-sabotage clause,
including Walter Lippman, Max Eastman, Margaret Sanger,
and others, Helen Keller doesn't sign.
Instead, writing in the socialist daily The New York Call,
she chastises the infighting.
"It fills me with amazement to see such a narrow spirit,
"and such ignoble strife between two factions
"which should be one, and that, too, at a most critical
"period in the struggle of the proletariat.
"What?
"Are we to put differences of party tactics
"before the desperate needs of the workers?"
While never fully breaking her ties with party affiliation,
within a few short years, it becomes manifest
where Helen's affinities lie when she aligns herself with
the foremost radical labor organization in the country.
Known variously as the Industrial Workers of the World,
the IWW, or the Wobblies, it is founded in 1905
in Chicago as an international labor organization
united as a social class aiming to supplant capitalism
and wage labor with a program of "industrial democracy".
Even with general public awareness of Helen Keller's
socialist sympathies, her joining forces with the IWW
is feared to be a tipping point.
One week following her Carnegie Hall speech,
Helen is interviewed at length by Barbara Bindley
for the "New York Tribune".
If Helen's recent call for "one great world-wide union"
and for "globe-encircling revolt"
hadn't made it clear enough,
the Tribune article would leave no doubts.
Early in the conversation, the interviewer asks Helen
how it was that she first gravitated
toward being a social crusader.
Whether because of, or in spite of,
having been born in the South in the 1880s
to a father who'd owned slaves before the Civil War
and who'd served as a captain in the Confederate Army,
Helen Keller emerged as a public advocate
against racial injustice.
Paying tribute to her in 1931, African-American writer,
scholar, and activist WEB Dubois described having
encountered Helen as a child when she first attended
the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Massachusetts.
"When I was studying Philosophy under William James,
"we made an excursion one day out to Roxbury.
"We stopped at the Blind Asylum and saw a young girl
"who was deaf and dumb and who yet, by infinite pains
"and loving sympathy, had been made to speak without words
"and to understand without sound."
Oh dear me.
My hearing
aids began to fail,
and so they make a sound.
And I'm sorry.
Well, let's just start again from the beginning.
Right-o.
"We stopped at the Blind Asylum and saw a young girl
"who was deaf and dumb and who yet, by infinite pains
"and loving sympathy, had been made to speak without words
"and to understand without sound.
"She was Helen Keller.
"Perhaps because she was blind
"to color difference in this world,
"I became intensely interested in her
"and all through my life I have followed her career.
"Finally, there came the thing that I had somehow
"sensed would come, Helen was in her own state, Alabama,
"being feted and made much of by her fellow citizens.
"And yet courageously, and frankly,
"she spoke out on the inequity
"and foolishness of the color line.
"It cost her something to speak.
"They wanted her to retract but she stayed serene
"in the consciousness of the truth that she had uttered.
"And so it was proven, as I knew it would be,
"that this woman who sits in darkness
"has a spiritual insight much clearer
"than that of many wide-eyed people who stare
"uncomprehendingly at this prejudiced world."
On April 7, 1917, one day following the U.S. Congress'
declaration of war on Germany
and formal entry into World War I,
an emergency meeting of the Socialist Party of America
convenes in St. Louis, Missouri.
By an overwhelming majority,
the Party denounces America's entry as
"a crime against the people",
declares it a war "imperialistic on both sides",
and pledges "continuous, active, and public opposition
"to the war, through demonstrations, mass petitions,
"and all other means within our power.
"We will not willingly give a single life
"or a single dollar."
Within two months, President Wilson signs into law
the Espionage Act, enabling sentences up to 20 years
for anyone willfully interfering
with military operations or recruitment.
Immediately socialists throughout the country are indicted,
convicted and jailed, a third of Socialist meeting halls
are destroyed, and dissemination of the majority
of socialist publications are banned from the mails.
On June 15th, 1917 in New York,
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are arrested
during a raid on their offices,
charged with conspiracy to "induce persons not to register"
and sentenced to two years in prison.
In July, 1917 in North Dakota,
Kate Richards O'Hare is sentenced to five years in prison
for making an anti-war speech.
On September 5th, 1917, a national dragnet
rounds up 166 senior members of the IWW,
raiding the headquarters of the Socialist Party
and of the IWW and 20 branch offices
of the IWW in different states.
Among them are many of Helen's close friends and allies,
provoking her to send an impassioned appeal
directly to President Wilson.
Helen puts the President on notice.
She makes the argument squarely.
She lays her cards fully on the table,
valiantly divulging more to the President.
When Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik revolutionary forces
seize power in Russia in the Fall of 1917,
in a nearly bloodless coup d'etat,
the enthusiasm it generates among progressive circles
worldwide is electric.
For Helen Keller as for many,
the establishment of the world's first constitutionally
socialist state offers, from afar,
the promise that the dream of a more egalitarian
and just restructuring of the world
could in fact be made a reality.
By the late 1930s, with the arrival of reports
on the wave of political purges, mass executions
and incarcerations in the Soviet Union,
Helen's support of the Russian experiment
becomes tempered, albeit somewhat.
Belatedly she would in time turn against Stalin,
though her conviction in the promise
of the Soviet dream endured,
gaining new traction when the Russian Army combats
Nazi Germany during World War II.
Following a forthright dinner discussion with a staunch
critic of the Soviet Union in 1943,
Helen decides to follow up with a letter
hoping to clarify any misunderstanding.
As Helen confided to a friend about the exchange days later,
"Alas, I am incorrigible,
"but what can one do when one believes that the truth
"is the highest compliment human beings can pay each other?"
So the question is about the Soviet Union,
and particularly about Lenin.
So what was Leninism?
Well, here we have to look at the facts.
Now, you know, if you look at the facts,
I think here's what you find.
Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the Socialist Movement
and he was so regarded.
He was regarded as that by the Marxists,
by the mainstream Marxists.
We've forgotten who the mainstream Marxists were
because they lost.
And you only remember the guys who won.
But if you go to that period,
the mainstream Marxists, were people like, for example,
Anton Pannekoek, who was head of education
for the Marxist movement.
He was one of the people who Lenin later
denounced as an infantile leftist.
But he was one of the leading intellectuals
of the actual Marxist movement.
Rosa Luxemburg was another mainstream Marxist,
and there were others.
And they were very...
in fact, Trotsky was one up until 1917.
They were all very critical of Leninism
because of this, what they regarded as this
opportunistic vanguardism.
The idea that the radical intelligentsia
were gonna exploit popular movements
to seize state power.
And then to use that state power
to whip the population into the society that they chose.
After all, the core of Socialism was understood
to be workers control over production.
That was the core.
That's where you begin with
and then you go on with other things.
But the beginning is control
by the workers over production,
and that's where it begins.
Then Lenin took power in October 1917
in what's called a revolution,
but in my view it ought to be called a coup.
And things followed that coup,
or revolution if you want to call it that.
One of the things that followed it
was the immediate moves to destroy
the Soviets and the factory councils.
Those were some of the first moves
of Lenin and Trotsky, Trotsky joined at that point,
after they took state power.
In fact, if you look at what Lenin wrote
after that period, or did,
you'll find it's a reversion to the earlier position.
This sort of left deviation is that, a deviation.
You could ask why, in my view it was just opportunistic.
He knew that in order to gain power,
he was gonna have to go along with
the popular currents that were developing.
Which were in fact, spontaneous, and libertarian,
and socialist, as most popular movements are.
Have been in fact since the 17th century.
And being an astute politician, which he was,
he sort of went along with that
and talked the line that the people wanted to hear.
It's just like when an American politician
goes somewhere and his pollsters tell him,
say so and so and he says it.
Doesn't mean he believes in it.
And I think Lenin was doing the same thing without the polls
Well, after that, comes the view that
all of this is Socialism.
And why should the communist parties take that view?
I think the reason is because they wanted to
sort of exploit the moral force of Socialism,
which was quite real.
You know, it's kind of hard to remember that today.
But at that time it was very real.
This was regarded as a progressive moral force
and by associating their own destruction of Socialism
with the aura of Socialism,
they hope to gain credit in the working classes
and other group progressive sectors.
Now, the West also identified that with Socialism.
And they did it for the opposite reason.
They wanted to associate Socialism
with the brutality of the Russian state
that undermines Socialism.
So what you had is is that two major
world propaganda agencies,
for their own and quite different reasons,
were claiming that this is Socialism.
That this destruction of Socialism is Socialism.
It's very hard to break out of
the control of the world's two major
propaganda agencies when they agree.
They agreed for different reasons.
But they basically agreed and that
then became doctrine and dogma.
Among the 20,000 books hurled into the infamous
Berlin bonfires of 1933,
an event organized by the German Student Union
accompanying Hitler's rise to power,
was Helen Keller's "Out Of The Dark".
In an "Open Letter to the Students of Germany",
Helen responded.
In 1946, while Helen travels throughout war-torn Europe,
visiting with those blinded
or otherwise disabled by the war,
a malfunctioning furnace in her home in Connecticut
burns the entire house to the ground.
All of Helen's possessions are destroyed,
including all her papers, letters, mementos,
as well as the manuscript for her long-planned
biography of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.
Within a year, through the generosity of friends,
the house is rebuilt.
Regarding the loss, Helen publicly conceals her sorrow,
simply remarking that she is happy to be rid
of the dangerous old furnace.
When, eight years later, at age 74,
Helen finishes the re-writing of her book, "Teacher",
she expresses gratefulness that the earlier manuscript
had burned, now convinced that she'd
found the proper perspective needed.
On September 11, 2001, beyond the catastrophic loss of life
resulting from the attacks on the World Trade Center,
fiery debris falling from the South Tower
strikes a building one block away,
housing, among other businesses,
the headquarters of the Helen Keller International.
Founded in 1915 by George Kessler and Helen Keller
and established initially to treat veterans blinded
in World War I, the Helen Keller International
has evolved into one of the oldest nonprofit organizations
dedicated to preventing blindness
and reducing malnutrition worldwide.
The building is severely damaged,
and two workers are killed when they are
trapped inside the elevators.
Within the offices of the Helen Keller International,
fire breaks out.
In addition to the loss of the entire institutional
archives of the organization,
is an irreplaceable collection of photos, letters,
and books of Helen Keller.
While virtually all is destroyed,
those sifting through the rubble discover,
singed but intact, a terra cotta bust of Helen
bestowed as a gift on her first trip to Japan in 1937.
Following the end of World War II,
Helen returns to Japan in 1948, sent by Douglas MacArthur
as America's first Goodwill Ambassador.
With an irony that does not escape her,
she tours the country making an appeal for new laws
on behalf of the welfare of the physically disabled.
Accompanied by her secretary Polly Thomson,
she revisits Hiroshima.
Toward the close of "Midstream: My later life",
Helen Keller's second autobiography, is a chapter,
part confession, part testament, part invitation,
entitled "Thoughts that will not let me sleep".
Miss Keller, I shall ask you a few questions,
and Miss Thomson will transmit them to you.
Tell me Miss Keller, I know you will realize
the question isn't as impertinent as it may sound.
Are you happy?
- Yes, I am happy. - Happiness comes from within.
I have time and faith, I am happy.
If you could have one wish granted,
what would it be?
I would wish for light in every eye and in every mind.