Item #16400 Helen Keller demands opportunities for blind people: “Give us work or we will perish”. Helen Keller.
Helen Keller demands opportunities for blind people: “Give us work or we will perish”

Helen Keller demands opportunities for blind people: “Give us work or we will perish”

Booklet

Helen Keller. Our Duties to the Blind. Presented by Helen Keller at the First Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Association for Promoting the Interests of the Adult Blind, January fifth, 1904. Perkins Hall. Boston, Thomas Todd: 16 pages. 6 ¼ x 3 ½ in. Purple printed wraps. Author’s first publication which calls for reform in the area of education and employment for blind adults.

In this paper, 24-year old Helen Keller calls on the state to implement reforms which would “raise the adult blind from dependence to self-respecting citizenship.” The same year this was delivered, Keller graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe (Harvard’s Women’s College), becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She calls for more practical trainings and work opportunities for graduates of schools for the blind, recalling: “To teach Latin and Greek and higher mathematics to blind pupils, and not to teach them to earn their bread, is to build a house entirely of stucco without stones to the walls or rafters to the roof. I have received letters from educated blind people, who repeat the cry, ‘Give us work or we will perish,’ and their despair lies heavy on my heart.” An early campaign for blind and disabled employment opportunities and rights in the workplace. Very good condition.

Item #16400

Price: $240.00