Helen Selsdon

A year ago today, the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This federal amendment prohibits denying citizens the right to vote based on sex. In effect, recognizing a woman’s right to vote. Last summer, AFB commemorated that event with a talk in conjunction with the Planting Fields Foundation by AFB archivist Helen Selsdon. Images from the digital Helen Keller Archive – including letters, photographs…

"Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap." -Helen Keller, "Going Back to School," The Home Magazine, September 1934 As AFB’s archivist since 2002, I have had the honor to lead the charge to organize, preserve, and digitize Helen Keller’s massive archive, and to make the collection freely available around the globe. The digital Helen Keller Archive…

Happy 154th Birthday, Anne Sullivan Macy! In light of this special occasion, we took a field trip deep into the digital Helen Keller Archive to unearth a lesser-known story of Helen's brilliant teacher... In the Fall of 1916, Anne Sullivan Macy, then 50, became ill with pleurisy. By the end of that year, Macy was recuperating in Puerto Rico, and Helen remained in her hometown of Tuscumbia, Alabama. This separation resulted in a correspondence between the two women. Relatively few letters…

March is Women’s History Month, typically a time to encourage the celebration and study of the vital role of women in American history. But this year, parents and teachers around the world are confronting uniquely challenging circumstances, as schools face unprecedented closures to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. At AFB, we have pulled together some accessible online resources that honor 7 blind women whose lives span from 1829 to 1985, and whose histories are largely forgotten. We…

Yesterday, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) was proud to announce that we will be partnering with the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) to expand public access to the Helen Keller Archival Collection and the archives of AFB. AFB is loaning its historic collections to the APH Museum, making Louisville, Kentucky, an important center for the study of the history of blindness and disabilities in the United States. Thanks to generous support from the National Endowment for the…

Over 180 totally gorgeous items can be seen for the very first time! Captured in over 1,200 fully accessible digital images, these 2D and 3D items in the Helen Keller Archive provide an alternative lens with which to view Helen Keller’s extraordinary life. Beautiful artifacts, oversize documents, and photograph albums are now there for all to see. The items include treasures like... Keller’s 1904 Bachelor of Arts Degree Certificate from Radcliffe College—Keller was the first deafblind person…

Circa 1821-1825, Louis Braille mastered the now-famous braille-dot code enabling blind and visually impaired individuals to read and enjoy the same wealth of knowledge as their sighted peers. As we’ve discovered during the Helen Keller Archive digitization project, humans always seem to find original ways to create methods with which to communicate. Fabulous examples of embossed items are scattered throughout the collection. Check these out: Letter written to Keller by Lucille Nurre in 1967…

During the 1940s, Helen Keller corresponded from her home in Westport, Connecticut with her good friend Clare Heineman in Chicago. One letter, written by Keller on Independence Day 1942 is particularly wonderful and classically Helen Keller – sweeping in its subject matter and passionate in its descriptions of how she physically experienced the world around her. The letter begins with gratitude for a 62nd birthday gift from Heineman. She writes that she will use the gift to purchase and plant…

Helen Keller was born 139 years ago today! Keller worked for AFB for 44 years. Within that time, and after her death in 1968, AFB amassed an enormous trove of materials by and about her. This extraordinary collection is a goldmine of social, political, and cultural history. It also presents a unique opportunity to teach and learn about Keller’s life, the times in which she lived, the history of disabilities, and the importance of universal accessibility. As a result of generous funding from…