Sullivan, Anne Mansfield (1866-1936), became known as the teacher of Helen Keller, a deaf and blind woman who won international fame. Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, near Springfield, Massachusetts. She had visual problems as a child and in 1880 became a student at the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston (now Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts). For a while at Perkins, she roomed with Laura Bridgman, the first deaf-blind person to be educated in the United States (see Bridgman, Laura Dewey ). In 1881 and 1887, Sullivan underwent surgery that restored most of her vision.
In 1887, Sullivan went to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to become the private teacher of Helen Keller, who was nearly 7 years old. Sullivan first communicated with the girl through a manual alphabet by which she spelled out words on Helen’s hands. She also taught Helen to read and write braille. In 1900, she accompanied Keller to Radcliffe College and spent four years there translating lectures for Helen by manual communication.
In 1904, Sullivan married John A. Macy, then an editor and a Harvard University instructor. But she and Keller remained together. The two women traveled widely and made a number of lecture tours. Sullivan died on Oct. 20, 1936.
The Broadway play The Miracle Worker (1959) deals with Sullivan’s difficulties in communicating with the young Keller before finally breaking through. It was later released as a motion picture in 1962.
See also Keller, Helen .
