Anne Sullivan Macy
“Teacher-and that was all.
It will be my answer
In the dark,
When death calls.”
-Helen Keller
Until her dying day, Helen Keller referred to the woman that had taught her, lived with her, and had been her constant companion for nearly 50 years, simply as “teacher.” This is perhaps the best description of, and most understated way to describe a woman who, despite formidable challenges of her own, helped one of the leading advocates for the disabled of the 20th century break through her own deafness and blindness to touch the world. This woman was Anne Sullivan Macy and she was, at her core, a teacher. While the often told story of Helen Keller’s triumph over her handicaps is inspiring, perhaps even more moving is the story of her teacher. She broke through the barriers of not only her own blindness and poverty, but also confining gender roles to become one of the most influential teachers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In order to understand truly appreciate the amount of perseverance and work that went into Anne Sullivan Macy’s success, one must also understand the situation into which she was born. Macy was the eldest child born to poor, illiterate, Irish-immigrant parents in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts on April 14, 1866 (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). Her mother and youngest brother Jimmie both suffered from tuberculosis (due to a fall shortly after Macy was born, her mother was unable to walk again without the aid of a crutch), and her father was a notorious alcoholic (Braddy, 1933). Around age 7 Macy also began to suffer with trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyes that causes scarring, terrible pain, and eventual blindness (it is still the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world, despite its easy treatment with cheap antibiotics) (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). In fact, her very first memory was of someone telling her mother that she would be beautiful if her eyes weren’t so cloudy (Braddy, 1933). Her parents could barely afford to purchase food for their children; much less seek medical care for their daughter’s eyes. Had it not been for the charity of their neighbors and scattered jobs for Macy’s father, the Sullivan family would have probably suffered greatly from malnutrition and possible homelessness. All of the Irish immigrant families in the area were poor, but few lived in such squalor as the Sullivans (Braddy, 1933).
Macy’s indomitable personality presented itself during her childhood as a willful temper and hot-headedness that often led to alcohol fueled beatings from her father, which were so severe that her mother would attempt to hide her from him (Braddy, 1933). However this gentle and protective maternal presence was removed when her mother died from tuberculosis when Macy was still small (the exact date is not known, and as Macy did not know her age at the time, only estimations can be made). Macy’s father was so distraught that he sank even farther into poverty and alcoholism (Braddy, 1933). Macy’s younger brother Jimmie and her sister Mary were sent to live with an Aunt and Uncle, while she stayed behind to keep house for her father. Eventually she too was sent to live with her relatives (Braddy, 1933). After only a few months, her relatives decided that they wished to wash their hands of the children. After all, Macy was blind and temperamental and her brother was weak and sickly. Her baby sister was sent to live with a distant cousin, and both Macy and her brother were sent away to Tewksbury Almshouse when she was about 10 years old (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
Prior to the 19th century, there was little professional health available for people who were suffering from mental health issues. However, at the turn of the 19th century Dorthea Dix, a mental health reformer, went on a crusade to allocate places for the mentally ill and destitute to be cared for, instead of being put in a jail or put out on the street. In 1854 the state of Massachusetts founded the Tewksbury State Almshouse to care for its “pauper insane” (State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse)). The vast majority of its residents were Irish immigrants. This is a reflection of the massive influx of Irish trying to flee the economic collapse in Ireland brought about by the potato famine into the United States at the time (State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse)). Tewksbury, when it opened, had a capacity to hold 500 people but by the time Macy arrived there, it held nearly 2,500 with only 14 employees to care for them (State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse)). Despite its altruistic intentions, Tewksbury was a place riddled by controversy in regards to its deplorable living conditions, and questionable practices. For example, human skin from dead patients was tanned to make shoes and lamp shades, dead bodies were dug up from the cemeteries and sold to Harvard Medical School by the administration, infants were given morphine to quiet them (nearly 90% of the babies born at the almshouse died), and the incidents of rape and medical experimentation were sadly high (Sun, 1883). Thousands of people were buried in the cemeteries surrounding the grounds. It was not a place where children like a young Anne Sullivan would thrive.
When Macy and her brother were placed in the almshouse, Macy noted that she wasn’t shocked by the conditions at Tewksbury because she was so used to filth and squalor (Braddy, 1933). She and her brother spent their first night sleeping in the dead house where corpses were stored before burial. Due to her near blindness and her brother’s trouble walking, they lived in the women’s hospital ward. For the first 4 months they were happy because they were together. However, Jimmie’s conditioned continued to deteriorate until he became bedridden with horrific thigh pain (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). His death at age 5 was perhaps the most traumatic experience of Macy’s life. She was distraught. About the event she said, “I believe very few children have ever been so completely left alone as I was…not a ray of light shone in the great darkness which covered me that day. (Braddy, 1933)” His body was placed in a mass grave in one of the institution’s grounds. However, his death spurred her towards wanting to leave the institution. When she was 14, she got the chance when she accosted state officials who were visiting the almshouse and asked them to let her to go to school (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
She was sent to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and her tuition was paid for with a charitable scholarship. At Perkins she was a misfit. She was a poor Irish-Catholic orphan with a hot temper and experiences that most children could hardly imagine, in a school for wealthy protestant children who had very comfortable and sheltered backgrounds (Braddy, 1933). She was teased by her teachers and peers for her inability to read despite her age, and she was placed in a kindergarten class with 5 year olds who referred to her condescendingly as “Big Annie (Braddy, 1933).” This treatment and her jealously at her peer’s easy lives, made her belligerent and prone to lashing out. Luckily, there were a few teachers who were able to reach Macy and soothe her more volatile tempers, and under their tutelage she began to thrive (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). Her curiosity and intelligence allowed her to excel in her studies, and after a series of surgeries that restored some of her sight, she began to read everything she could get her hands on (she never learned to use Braille effectively). Her affinity for teaching began to emerge at Perkins as well; she helped a group of younger children learn to love Greek mythology by cleverly suggesting that they take the names of mythological characters (Braddy, 1933). After just 6 years, she graduated as Valedictorian of her class (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
Despite her triumph at graduating from Perkins, Macy was faced with a massive problem: employment. Women of the late 19th century of high social standard did not work. Most of the young women who graduated with Macy would return back to their families where they would be supported until they got married (Braddy, 1933). Macy, who was grappling with a great deal of shame at her impoverished background at the time, was concerned about how she would find respectable work. She had not told many people about her time at Tewksbury (in fact, she would not tell anyone her story until she was in her 50’s) and she certainly did not want to have to return to the almshouse (Braddy, 1933). Ironically enough, one of the professions that Macy thought she would absolutely not want to try was teaching. However, when the director of Perkins offered her a teaching position for a deaf-blind girl in Alabama, Macy was out of options (Braddy, 1933).
Perhaps the most daring thing that Macy ever did was stepping onto the train that was to take her from the only home she had ever known, to Alabama where she would meet Helen Keller. Keller was stricken blind and deaf by scarlet fever, and she had developed into a frustrated and destructive child who had no way to communicate with the world around her (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). When she arrived in Alabama, she was faced with many obstacles, not the least of which was her place as an outsider. She was an outspoken and fiery young woman from Boston in a sleepy southern town full of demure and well-mannered southern belles. The respect she garnered from the community was hard-fought; they were simply unaccustomed to well-educated and opinionated women (Braddy, 1933). Her task as a teacher was not simple either. However, with much patience, trial and error, and sheer force of will she first got Keller to become obedient, and then helped her to learn language through the manual alphabet (Braddy, 1933).
For the rest of Macy’s life she was Keller’s constant companion. Both she and Keller were champions for the underprivileged and disabled. Macy was honored with a doctoral degree, as well as many other recognitions and accolades for her accomplishments in education and humanitarian causes (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). She traveled to nearly every continent on the planet, was a Vaudeville actress with Keller, made a movie, got married (and separated) and was great friends with the intellectuals of her time like Mark Twain who called her “the Miracle Worker.” In 2006 she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 1936 when she died holding Keller’s hand, she was interred into the Washington National Cathedral (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). Nearly 1,200 people attended her funeral (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
While many people know the story of Helen Keller, few people know the incredible story behind her teacher who was the power-house from whom Keller drew her strength through many of her most difficult struggles, and whose friendship was the most meaningful relationship she ever had. Anne Sullivan Macy was a woman before her time. She was independent, educated, adventurous, and self-supporting in a time when women could not even vote. She did not let her blindness or other’s perceptions of her gender stop her in achieving incredible things with her life and helping others reach their full potential.
It will be my answer
In the dark,
When death calls.”
-Helen Keller
Until her dying day, Helen Keller referred to the woman that had taught her, lived with her, and had been her constant companion for nearly 50 years, simply as “teacher.” This is perhaps the best description of, and most understated way to describe a woman who, despite formidable challenges of her own, helped one of the leading advocates for the disabled of the 20th century break through her own deafness and blindness to touch the world. This woman was Anne Sullivan Macy and she was, at her core, a teacher. While the often told story of Helen Keller’s triumph over her handicaps is inspiring, perhaps even more moving is the story of her teacher. She broke through the barriers of not only her own blindness and poverty, but also confining gender roles to become one of the most influential teachers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In order to understand truly appreciate the amount of perseverance and work that went into Anne Sullivan Macy’s success, one must also understand the situation into which she was born. Macy was the eldest child born to poor, illiterate, Irish-immigrant parents in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts on April 14, 1866 (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). Her mother and youngest brother Jimmie both suffered from tuberculosis (due to a fall shortly after Macy was born, her mother was unable to walk again without the aid of a crutch), and her father was a notorious alcoholic (Braddy, 1933). Around age 7 Macy also began to suffer with trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyes that causes scarring, terrible pain, and eventual blindness (it is still the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world, despite its easy treatment with cheap antibiotics) (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). In fact, her very first memory was of someone telling her mother that she would be beautiful if her eyes weren’t so cloudy (Braddy, 1933). Her parents could barely afford to purchase food for their children; much less seek medical care for their daughter’s eyes. Had it not been for the charity of their neighbors and scattered jobs for Macy’s father, the Sullivan family would have probably suffered greatly from malnutrition and possible homelessness. All of the Irish immigrant families in the area were poor, but few lived in such squalor as the Sullivans (Braddy, 1933).
Macy’s indomitable personality presented itself during her childhood as a willful temper and hot-headedness that often led to alcohol fueled beatings from her father, which were so severe that her mother would attempt to hide her from him (Braddy, 1933). However this gentle and protective maternal presence was removed when her mother died from tuberculosis when Macy was still small (the exact date is not known, and as Macy did not know her age at the time, only estimations can be made). Macy’s father was so distraught that he sank even farther into poverty and alcoholism (Braddy, 1933). Macy’s younger brother Jimmie and her sister Mary were sent to live with an Aunt and Uncle, while she stayed behind to keep house for her father. Eventually she too was sent to live with her relatives (Braddy, 1933). After only a few months, her relatives decided that they wished to wash their hands of the children. After all, Macy was blind and temperamental and her brother was weak and sickly. Her baby sister was sent to live with a distant cousin, and both Macy and her brother were sent away to Tewksbury Almshouse when she was about 10 years old (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
Prior to the 19th century, there was little professional health available for people who were suffering from mental health issues. However, at the turn of the 19th century Dorthea Dix, a mental health reformer, went on a crusade to allocate places for the mentally ill and destitute to be cared for, instead of being put in a jail or put out on the street. In 1854 the state of Massachusetts founded the Tewksbury State Almshouse to care for its “pauper insane” (State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse)). The vast majority of its residents were Irish immigrants. This is a reflection of the massive influx of Irish trying to flee the economic collapse in Ireland brought about by the potato famine into the United States at the time (State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse)). Tewksbury, when it opened, had a capacity to hold 500 people but by the time Macy arrived there, it held nearly 2,500 with only 14 employees to care for them (State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse)). Despite its altruistic intentions, Tewksbury was a place riddled by controversy in regards to its deplorable living conditions, and questionable practices. For example, human skin from dead patients was tanned to make shoes and lamp shades, dead bodies were dug up from the cemeteries and sold to Harvard Medical School by the administration, infants were given morphine to quiet them (nearly 90% of the babies born at the almshouse died), and the incidents of rape and medical experimentation were sadly high (Sun, 1883). Thousands of people were buried in the cemeteries surrounding the grounds. It was not a place where children like a young Anne Sullivan would thrive.
When Macy and her brother were placed in the almshouse, Macy noted that she wasn’t shocked by the conditions at Tewksbury because she was so used to filth and squalor (Braddy, 1933). She and her brother spent their first night sleeping in the dead house where corpses were stored before burial. Due to her near blindness and her brother’s trouble walking, they lived in the women’s hospital ward. For the first 4 months they were happy because they were together. However, Jimmie’s conditioned continued to deteriorate until he became bedridden with horrific thigh pain (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). His death at age 5 was perhaps the most traumatic experience of Macy’s life. She was distraught. About the event she said, “I believe very few children have ever been so completely left alone as I was…not a ray of light shone in the great darkness which covered me that day. (Braddy, 1933)” His body was placed in a mass grave in one of the institution’s grounds. However, his death spurred her towards wanting to leave the institution. When she was 14, she got the chance when she accosted state officials who were visiting the almshouse and asked them to let her to go to school (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
She was sent to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and her tuition was paid for with a charitable scholarship. At Perkins she was a misfit. She was a poor Irish-Catholic orphan with a hot temper and experiences that most children could hardly imagine, in a school for wealthy protestant children who had very comfortable and sheltered backgrounds (Braddy, 1933). She was teased by her teachers and peers for her inability to read despite her age, and she was placed in a kindergarten class with 5 year olds who referred to her condescendingly as “Big Annie (Braddy, 1933).” This treatment and her jealously at her peer’s easy lives, made her belligerent and prone to lashing out. Luckily, there were a few teachers who were able to reach Macy and soothe her more volatile tempers, and under their tutelage she began to thrive (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). Her curiosity and intelligence allowed her to excel in her studies, and after a series of surgeries that restored some of her sight, she began to read everything she could get her hands on (she never learned to use Braille effectively). Her affinity for teaching began to emerge at Perkins as well; she helped a group of younger children learn to love Greek mythology by cleverly suggesting that they take the names of mythological characters (Braddy, 1933). After just 6 years, she graduated as Valedictorian of her class (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
Despite her triumph at graduating from Perkins, Macy was faced with a massive problem: employment. Women of the late 19th century of high social standard did not work. Most of the young women who graduated with Macy would return back to their families where they would be supported until they got married (Braddy, 1933). Macy, who was grappling with a great deal of shame at her impoverished background at the time, was concerned about how she would find respectable work. She had not told many people about her time at Tewksbury (in fact, she would not tell anyone her story until she was in her 50’s) and she certainly did not want to have to return to the almshouse (Braddy, 1933). Ironically enough, one of the professions that Macy thought she would absolutely not want to try was teaching. However, when the director of Perkins offered her a teaching position for a deaf-blind girl in Alabama, Macy was out of options (Braddy, 1933).
Perhaps the most daring thing that Macy ever did was stepping onto the train that was to take her from the only home she had ever known, to Alabama where she would meet Helen Keller. Keller was stricken blind and deaf by scarlet fever, and she had developed into a frustrated and destructive child who had no way to communicate with the world around her (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). When she arrived in Alabama, she was faced with many obstacles, not the least of which was her place as an outsider. She was an outspoken and fiery young woman from Boston in a sleepy southern town full of demure and well-mannered southern belles. The respect she garnered from the community was hard-fought; they were simply unaccustomed to well-educated and opinionated women (Braddy, 1933). Her task as a teacher was not simple either. However, with much patience, trial and error, and sheer force of will she first got Keller to become obedient, and then helped her to learn language through the manual alphabet (Braddy, 1933).
For the rest of Macy’s life she was Keller’s constant companion. Both she and Keller were champions for the underprivileged and disabled. Macy was honored with a doctoral degree, as well as many other recognitions and accolades for her accomplishments in education and humanitarian causes (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). She traveled to nearly every continent on the planet, was a Vaudeville actress with Keller, made a movie, got married (and separated) and was great friends with the intellectuals of her time like Mark Twain who called her “the Miracle Worker.” In 2006 she was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 1936 when she died holding Keller’s hand, she was interred into the Washington National Cathedral (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker). Nearly 1,200 people attended her funeral (Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker).
While many people know the story of Helen Keller, few people know the incredible story behind her teacher who was the power-house from whom Keller drew her strength through many of her most difficult struggles, and whose friendship was the most meaningful relationship she ever had. Anne Sullivan Macy was a woman before her time. She was independent, educated, adventurous, and self-supporting in a time when women could not even vote. She did not let her blindness or other’s perceptions of her gender stop her in achieving incredible things with her life and helping others reach their full potential.
References:
Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker. (n.d.). Retrieved from American Foundation For the Blind: http://www.afb.org/asm/asmgallery.asp?FrameID=74
Braddy, N. (1933). Anne Sullivan Macy The Story Behind Helen Keller.
State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse). (n.d.). Retrieved from Tewksbury Historical Society: http://www.tewksburyhistoricalsociety.org/Archives/StateHospital/
Sun, L. W. (1883, April 24 ). About Tewksbury. Retrieved from Disability History Museum: http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=2329&page=all
Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker. (n.d.). Retrieved from American Foundation For the Blind: http://www.afb.org/asm/asmgallery.asp?FrameID=74
Braddy, N. (1933). Anne Sullivan Macy The Story Behind Helen Keller.
State Hospital (Tewksbury Almshouse). (n.d.). Retrieved from Tewksbury Historical Society: http://www.tewksburyhistoricalsociety.org/Archives/StateHospital/
Sun, L. W. (1883, April 24 ). About Tewksbury. Retrieved from Disability History Museum: http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=2329&page=all