Photo by Wikimedia Commons
By Mikhail Razzak, age 11
- I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, AL, and died June 1, 1968, in Easton, CT.
- I learned how to read and write when my teacher, Anne Sullivan, poured water with a pump on my hand and spelled the word “water” on the other.
- I wrote about social justice issues frequently, and in 1913, I wrote Out of the Dark: Essays, Letters, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision, a book to help blind people fight inequality.
- I worked on the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.
- I worked on social justice causes like workers’ rights, birth control, and spoke out against racism.
- Having lived through the two World Wars, I strongly opposed them and wrote, “I want you to know that I should be proud if the Supreme Court convicted me of abhorring war, and doing all in my power to oppose it.”
- I went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1948 as a Goodwill Ambassador after the atomic bombings of World War II to speak with Japanese people with disabilities, and I strongly condemned nuclear war.
- I traveled to over 35 countries on five continents between 1946 and 1957.
- I did all of this after losing my vision and hearing when I was 19 months old.
