Anne Sullivan

Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936) was an American educator known for her decades of work as teacher and companion to Helen Keller. Born Johanna Mansfield Sullivan in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, she was herself visually impaired from childhood trachoma and attended the Perkins School for the Blind, graduating as valedictorian in 1886. In 1887 she began teaching the seven year old Helen Keller, establishing a nearly fifty year relationship that transformed Keller's education. Sullivan's method of spelling words into Keller's palm let Keller connect words to objects and ideas despite being both deaf and blind, and under Sullivan's guidance Keller went on to earn a degree from Radcliffe College. Sullivan is remembered as a pioneering figure in the education of deafblind children, and her palm spelling approach became a model for later teachers working with deafblind students. She died on October 20, 1936, in Queens, New York, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2003.