Anne Sullivan Macy - The Fire of a Purpose — Disability Throughout History

Thanks to the fame of Helen Keller (who will be her own post at some point, worry not), many people also know the name of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. The teleplay The Miracle Worker about their relationship was performed in 1957 and converted to a Broadway production just two years later. It was made into a film in 1962, followed by made-for-television movies in 1979 and 2000. All this to say, Anne is decently well-known. Because of her fame, I wanted to do a deep-dive into her life. The most challenging part of writing this, though, was not getting too caught up in Helen's story. Anne lived her own story in her own right and I want to honor that.

Johanna Mansfield Sullivan was born in Feeding Hills, Agawam, Massachusetts on April 14, 1866 (exactly one year after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated). Though her name is listed as Johanna on her baptismal certificate, she was always called Anne or Annie. She was the oldest child of Irish Catholic immigrants, Thomas and Alice (Cloesy) Sullivan, who had come to America during the Great Famine. Together the couple had five children, though two died in infancy. During Anne's impoverished childhood, her mother suffered a serious fall and had trouble getting around afterward.

At the age of five, Anne contracted trachoma, a contagious bacterial infection that affects the eyes. If untreated, which it would have been at the time since there were no antibiotics, it can lead to blindness. Today, trachoma is the leading preventable cause of blindness in the world. Risk factors include: crowded living conditions, poor sanitation, and being a child between the ages of 4-6. These factors absolutely played a part in Anne's case. The trachoma caused chronic painful infections and the resulting irritation and corneal scarring left her nearly blind.

Just three years later, when Anne was eight, her mother died from tuberculosis. Thomas tried to raise his three children, Anne (who was visually impaired), Mary, and Jimmie (who had a hip condition), on his own for two more years until abandoning them. Thomas was an alcoholic and said to often be abusive to his children. It was recorded that Anne was very strong-willed and frequently clashed with her father. Before being abandoned, Jimmie and Mary were sent to live with an uncle while Anne remained with Thomas, who shared stories of Irish folklore and railed against the British.

Then, in February 1876, Anne and Jimmie (ages nine and five) were sent to an almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts and Mary (age three) was sent to live with her aunt Mary Clarey in Agawam. It appears that Anne never saw her sister Mary again. The almshouse, today a part of Tewksbury Hospital, was dirty, run-down and overcrowded. At that time, it was also under investigation for cruelty to inmates, including abuse, sexual perversion, and even cannibalism. During the years she lived there, the building housed an average of 940 people. Mortality was high. Four months after arriving, Jimmie died from tuberculosis. Anne remembered screaming when she saw his body and needed to be physically pulled away from holding him; she wrote later that "something in me broke."

Anne was now alone in the world at the young age of ten, confined to the facility for the ill, insane, alcoholics, and poor immigrants. One severely disabled religious woman, Maggie Carroll, told Anne that being at Tewksbury was God's will, so she should just resign to living her life there. But, from one blind resident, she learned that there were schools for blind children. Getting an education became the goal of her life. Anne took a trial position as a housemaid that did not result in a job. She also underwent two unsuccessful eye operations while there before being sent to the Soeurs de la Charite (the Sisters of Charity) hospital in Lowell, Massachusetts for another unsuccessful operation. During her recovery, from February-July 1877, she assisted the nuns in their work and ran errands for them. Anne was then sent to the city infirmary for yet another unsuccessful eye operation, then was forced back to Tewksbury against her will. This time, she was housed with unmarried pregnant women and single mothers.

Though Anne was eventually freed from this hell, she was affected by it for the rest of her life. She later wrote,

“Unexpected good has filled the chinks of frustration in my life. But at times melancholy without reason grips me as in a vice [sic]. A word, an odd inflection, the way somebody crosses the street, brings all the past before me with such amazing clearness and completeness, my heart stops beating for a moment. Then everything around me seems as it was so many years ago. Even the ugly frame-buildings are revived. Again I see the unsightly folk who hobbled, cursed, fed and snored like animals. I shiver recalling how I looked upon scenes of vile exposure—the open heart of a derelict is not a pleasant thing. I doubt if life, or eternity for that matter, is long enough to erase the errors and ugly blots scored upon my brain by those dismal years.”

The almshouse, which had been under investigation since 1875, was being inspected in 1880 by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the State Inspector of Charities. While he was there, Anne worked up her courage and begged him to allow her admittance to the Perkins School for the Blind. This well-known institution, founded in 1829, is the oldest school for the blind in the United States and is still in operation today. Within a few months, Anne was admitted to the school and finally able to leave the almshouse. She wrote of her experiences, "I have endured much physical pain, and I can feel real pity for any one who suffers. The misfortunes of the disinherited of the world rouse in me not only compassion but a fierce indignation."

Anne was fourteen years old when she finally began school on October 7, 1880. By this time, she had spent four years on her own in almshouses and hospitals and had never formally attended school. She remembered of the train ride to Perkins: "The essence of poverty, is shame. Shame to have been overwhelmed by ugliness, shame to be the hole in the perfect pattern of the universe. In that moment an intense realization of the ugliness of my appearance seized me." She had difficulty initially at the quiet and sedate Perkins, due to her "rough manners" (her cousin Anastasia had even said of her, "A colt or a heifer in the pasture has better manners."). Anne later told a biographer that "All my experience had unfitted me for living a normal life." She could not read or write, she did not know how to thread a needle, and she had never owned a nightgown or a hairbrush. Most of the students there were the Protestant children of wealthy merchants or farmers. Due to the frequent humiliations by her peers and even some teachers, Anne's quick temper flared and she enjoyed challenging the rules. She even came close to expulsion a few times. She later said, "I was extremely conscious of my crudeness, and because I felt this inferiority, I carried a chip on my shoulder."

Thankfully, a few teachers and staff connected with her. One, Mrs. Sophia Hopkins, was the house mother of her cottage, who treated Anne like a daughter. She spent time at the Hopkins home on Cape Cod during school vacations. Anne learned that she loved reading, especially poetry. She even befriended and learned fingerspelling from Laura Bridgman herself, who had been the first deafblind student at Perkins. Bridgman was known for being demanding, but Anne was patient, frequently reading her the newspaper or just having casual conversations.

Anne pushed through her anger and shame to achieve academically, aided by eye operations in 1881 and 1882 that finally improved her vision significantly. It was finally adequate enough to be able to read print. Though she never quite fit in with her peers, she was a bright young woman. In June 1886, at the age of twenty, she graduated from Perkins as the valedictorian of her class. Her address concluded as follows (full transcript available here):

“Fellow-graduates: Duty bids us go forth into active life. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly, and set ourselves to find our especial part. When we have found it, willingly and faithfully perform it; for every obstacle we overcome, every success we achieve tends to bring man closer to God and make life more as He would have it.”

During the summer after graduation, Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins, was contacted by Arthur Keller, who sought a teacher for his deafblind daughter. Anagnos recommended the intelligent and stubborn Anne, whom he had nicknamed "Miss Spitfire," for the position (the letter offering her the job is available here). Before leaving for the Keller home, Anne studied the instructional methods used with Laura Bridgman. She arrived in Tuscumbia, Alabama at the Kellers' Ivy Green Estate in March 1887. Though the relationship started off rocky (Anne fought with the Kellers about the Civil War and about the fact that they had formerly owned enslaved people), Anne and Helen, then age seven, soon connected. It was the beginning of a 49-year relationship between the two, where Anne played the roles of teacher, governess, companion, and friend.

When Anne began working with the little girl, Helen had developed more than 60 home signs to communicate and could tell people apart by the vibration of their footsteps. She enjoyed music by feeling the beat and strongly connected with animals through touch. She often communicated through physical aggression as well. Helen's mother, Kate, had pursued any possible help for her daughter who had been rendered blind and deaf from a childhood "brain fever." She had been inspired by Laura Bridgman to pursue a specialist in Baltimore, then met with Alexander Graham Bell (who worked with deaf children at that time), who advised them to contact Perkins.

Helen recalled the day Anne arrived as "my soul's birthday." Anne immediately gave her a doll, fingerspelling the word into her palm. Helen did not understand that every object had a unique label. She was frustrated, even breaking a mug while Anne tried to teach her the word. Helen did begin imitating Anne's hand gestures, though still did not understand their meaning. Anne tried to keep a strict schedule with formal vocabulary lessons, but was unsuccessful. She decided to shift tactics to follow Helen's interests and activities. She talked to the little girl constantly by fingerspelling into her hand. In a letter to her beloved Mrs. Hopkins, Anne wrote,

“I am convinced that the time spent by the teacher in digging out of the child what she has put into him, for the sake of satisfying herself that it has taken root, is so much time thrown away. It’s much better, I think, to assume the child is doing his part, and that the seed you have sown will bear fruit in due time. It’s only fair to the child, anyhow, and it saves you unnecessary trouble. ”

(Transcripts of letters such as this one are available here.)

The breakthrough moment came the next month, when Anne spelled "water" into Helen's palm while running cool water over her hand. Due to how spoiled and stubborn Helen was, Anne had isolated the two of them in a nearby cottage to intensify her education. Helen made the connection finally, later writing,

“I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten - a thrill of returning though; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free! ”

Helen then demanded the name of everything, exhausting her thrilled teacher.

Within six months, Helen had learned 575 words, Braille, and some multiplication tables. Anne, frustrated by the isolation and limited materials available, pushed the Kellers to send their daughter to Perkins with her for a formal education. They agreed. Anne, Helen, and Kate Keller traveled to Boston in 1888, to the school that had opened the world to Anne herself several years earlier. Along the way, the three went to Washington, DC to meet President Grover Cleveland and, once more, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. Bell continued to emotionally support Helen as well as her teacher while spreading public awareness of the two. Anne remembered, "Dr. Bell had a happy way of making people feel pleased with themselves. He had a remarkable faculty of bringing out the best that was in them. After a conversation with him I felt released, important, communicative. All the pent-up resentment within me went out in genial atmosphere he spread about him."

The little girl continued to progress rapidly and became the public symbol for the school. This made Perkins the most famous school for the blind in the country, increasing its funding and donations. There was tension, as Anne disliked the loss of independence in Helen's education and worried that Helen's fame would create harmfully unrealistic expectations. The pair sometimes lived for long periods at the school and sometimes lived in Alabama with the Kellers. An 1891 plagiarism accusation and subsequent investigation of a story Helen wrote for Anagnos, the Perkins director, greatly upset the two. They severed their formal relationship with Perkins, though maintained friendships. Anne chose never to return to the campus and did not mention the school in an autobiographical article for Youth's Companion. Helen appeared to hold less of a grudge, donating books from her personal library in 1909 and participating in ceremonies in her later years.

Anne, in 1892, was elected a member of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (she was asked to give a speech in 1894, but was so shy that Bell delivered it for her). In 1894, Anne and Helen moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Thanks to wealthy benefactors, including millionaire Andrew Carnegie, the Kellers were able to send Helen to these schools and continuing paying Anne for her services. At Horace Mann, Helen was taught verbal speech by Sarah Fuller (she had been determined to learn to speak after hearing about the deafblind student Ragnhild Kata in 1890). She learned to "hear" people by using the Tadoma method, meaning she used her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. She also continued to communicate with fingerspelling and braille.

Two years later, Helen returned to Massachusetts to attend The Cambridge School for Young Ladies, whose mission was to prepare female students for admissions to Radcliffe College. At the Cambridge School, the director felt that Anne was working Helen too hard and causing her health to suffer. He wrote to Kate Keller and received permission to separate the two. Helen and her sister, Mildred, who was visiting, refused to go with the director to his home without Anne. Anne sent telegrams to Helen's mother, Bell, and philanthropist Eleanor Hutton. While waiting for their arrivals, Anne went back to the house where Helen and Mildred were and refused to leave. Once everyone had arrived and Bell's assistant collected independent reports, the matter was cleared up. Helen left the school permanently and completed her preparation at Joseph E. Chamberlin's, a friend, home in Wrentham, Massachusetts.

Helen was admitted to Radcliffe in 1900. She was 20 years old and Anne was 34. Author Mark Twain (who was the first to describe Anne as a "miracle-worker") and oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers admired Helen very much, so they paid for her education. She lived in Briggs Hall, South House. At the time, Radcliffe was the female coordinate institution for Harvard University. Though founded in 1636, Harvard was male-only. Radcliffe, founded at the "Harvard Annex" in 1879, was one of the Seven Sisters colleges. It was not until 1963 that graduates were conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas. In 1977, Radcliffe signed a formal "non-merger merger" agreement with Harvard and was fully integrated with Harvard in 1999. It is now known as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Helen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe in 1904, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. This is significantly thanks to the ever-faithful Anne who, despite the strain on her own limited vision, spelled all class lectures into Helen's hand and spent up to five hours a day reading information from textbooks to her.

*Anne reading to Helen as they sit in a tree, 1904*

Anne married John Albert Macy, a Harvard instructor and literary critic eleven years her junior, on May 3, 1905. He had learned manual sign language and helped Helen publish her memoir, The Story of My Life, two years earlier. Anne actually rejected his proposals several times before marrying, concerned that he would not handle her temper and that she was Catholic and he a Protestant. The wedding, held at Anne and Helen's Wrentham home with a wedding cake Anne made herself, was reported in newspapers across the country, thanks to Helen's fame. Macy moved in with the two women following a brief honeymoon in New Orleans.

Though Macy was kind and continued helping Helen publish more work while continuing his work as an editor, Anne did not appear to fully trust him. She actually had burned her private journals when she wed for fear of what her new husband might think of her. The marriage was troubled with Anne's emotional difficulties, financial strain, and her unbending devotion to Helen. In 1913, the two women began a 15-month lecture tour of the Northeast while Macy traveled alone to Europe. The two separated in 1914, though never officially divorced. Helen wrote of Anne's suffering:

“For days she would shut herself up almost stunned, trying to think of a plan that would bring John back or weeping as only women who are no longer cherished weep...The happy light faded from Teacher’s face, but she was too reserved to show her grief openly, and she refused to be comforted. To no one, except myself in the silence of the night, did she speak of her anguish or the terrible dreams that pursued her.”

Right after the separation, Macy would write asking for money. He was listed as a "lodger" in their home in the 1920 census before fading away from her life. Macy died in 1932 in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Anne never remarried and kept her married name, Anne Sullivan Macy.

*Macy, Anne, & Helen with their dog, 1905*

Helen and Anne lectured around the world. Though Helen had learned to verbally speak, she could be difficult to understand, so Anne helped relay her words. One article in the Dunn County News in 1916 reported:

“A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on “Happiness”, and it will be remembered. ”

Anne also assisted Helen in her prolific writing. She wrote in a 1905 letter just how much Helen still needed her:

“Of course you know that whatever Helen writes represents my labor as well as hers. The genius is hers, but much of the drudgery is mine. The conditions are such that she could not prepare a paper for publication without my help. The difficulties under which she works are insurmountable. Some one must always be at her side to read to her, to keep her typewriter in order, to read over her manuscript, make corrections and look up words for her, and to do the many things which she would do for herself if she had her sight.”

Though numerous operations had restored some of Anne's sight, she still was severely visually impaired. She needed to wear glasses with dark grey lenses due to light sensitivity. As early as 1914, when her marriage collapsed, her health began failing. Helen wrote that, "Her health was not good. She had once exercised vigorously, but one of her chief difficulties, overweight, was causing her immeasurable discomfort. Her sight was worse, and she could no longer console herself by even short periods of independent reading." Anne's estranged husband sent a young reporter, Peter Fagan, to become Helen's secretary in 1916. A Scottish immigrant, Polly Thomson, was hired as a housekeeper. Anne was then sent to recover from pleurisy and (incorrectly diagnosed) tuberculosis in Puerto Rico. Anne thrived during her time on the island, recuperating happily in the warm weather. She immediately returned home when the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. Both Anne and Polly accompanied Helen as she made antiwar speeches and visited blinded servicemen.

Polly Thomson was now Helen's secretary as well as a companion due to Anne's poor health. The three women moved to Forest Hills, Queens, New York, leaving the sour memories of Wrentham behind. The women still struggled to make ends meet. Anne even played herself in the first film version of Helen's life, De l iverance, in 1919 for extra money. It was a box office failure, though Anne felt better in the warmer climate and the pair became friends with actor Charlie Chaplin in the process. Helen later wrote that Anne and Chaplin "had both endured poverty...both struggled for education and social equality, and as success had crowned their efforts they had poured themselves out in tenderness to the unprivileged...So it was natural that they should understand each other and form one of the friendships that afford solace to great artists in a world too often unfaithful to the children of genius."

*Polly, Anne, Helen, & Charlie Chaplin, 1918*

Anne and Helen also toured the vaudeville circuit lecturing and making witty remarks in the early 1920s. (Examples of their question-and-answer jokes can be found here.) The shows were incredibly successfully and Helen loved performing, but Anne did not. They only performed until 1922, when Anne's poor vision and health worsened again. A few years later, the two were able to go on a fundraising campaign for the American Foundation for the Blind, addressing 250,000 people at 249 meetings in 123 cities. The President and Executive Director of the organization dubbed Anne, Helen, and Polly "The Three Musketeers."

*Helen, Anne, & Polly with dogs Darky & Helga, 1931*

Though Anne was in ill health, she still desired to work with the deafblind, especially Helen. She even considered taking a job teaching a deafblind baby, but was dissuaded from this. In her 1931 manuscript Foolish Remarks of a Foolish Woman (available online here), Anne wrote: "I hate a mapped-out life, yet I can't find a centre within myself to grow from. Growth requires time and patience, yet I can't let them be. I am impelled to dig up the acorn and see if the oak has sprouted. Only in Helen have I kept the fire of a purpose alive. Every other dream flame has been blown out by some interfering fool."

By the late 1920s, Anne had lost almost all of her vision. She had chronic pain in her right eye, which was then surgically removed in 1929 to improve her health. She visited Scotland to rest for several summers. By 1935, she was completely blind. The following year, she suffered a heart attack, fell into a coma, and died five days later, on October 20, 1936. She was 70 years old. She died in Forest Hills with Helen holding her hand. Though Helen described Anne's last month as being very agitated, she had returned to her normal kind self during her last week. Anne was cremated and her ashes interred at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC - the first woman to be honored this way. Helen died in 1968, her ashes placed next to Anne's and Polly Thomson's.

Helen and Anne received many honors together. They each received honorary fellowships from the Educational Institute of Scotland in 1932 as well as honorary degrees from Temple University (though Anne initially refused this one). Helen received in honorary degree from Harvard in 1955 and the director's cottage at Perkins was renamed the Keller-Macy college in 1956. Anne was even inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Irish American Hall of Fame in 2016. Though she did not want her correspondance to be kept after her death, some of her writings are kept by the American Foundation for the Blind's Helen Keller Archive. Others are kept at Perkins in Watertown, Massachusetts and the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Of her beloved teacher, Helen wrote, "By nature she was a conceiver, a trail-blazer, a pilgrim of life's wholeness. So day by day, month after month, year in and year out, she labored to provide me with a diction and a voice sufficient for my service to the blind." At Anne's funeral, Bishop James E. Freeman said, "Among the great teachers of all time she occupies a commanding and conspicuous place... The touch of her hand did more than illuminate the pathway of a clouded mind; it literally emancipated a soul."

Most sincerely,

Christina

Further Reading

Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller by Kim E. Nielsen
Perseverance: The Story of Anne Sullivan Macy (Helen Keller's Teacher) by Janice Larsen
Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy by Joseph P. Lash
Anne Sullivan: Finding a Home by Wanda Kay Knight (ages 6-10)
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller (ages 10-12)
Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller by Joseph Lambert (ages 10-14)
Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher by Marfe Delano (ages 10-14)

Works Consulted

A&E Networks Television, LLC. (2020, March 2). Anne Sullivan. Biography. https://www.biography.com/activist/anne-sullivan.

A&E Television Networks. (2021, March 2). Helen Keller meets Anne Sullivan, her teacher and “miracle worker.” History.com. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/helen-keller-meets-her-miracle-worker.

American Foundation for the Blind . (2021). Introduction: The Miracle Worker. The American Foundation for the Blind. https://www.afb.org/about-afb/history/online-museums/anne-sullivan-miracle-worker.

American Foundation for the Blind. (2021). More Than 90 Years of Advocacy and Support for People with Vision Loss. The American Foundation for the Blind. https://www.afb.org/about-afb/history.

Famous People. (2020). Anne Sullivan. The Famous People. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/johanna-mansfield-sullivan-macy-733.php.

McGinnity, B. L., Seymour-Ford, J., & Andries, K. J. (2004). Anne Sullivan. Perkins History Museum. https://www.perkins.org/anne-sullivan/.

Perkins School for the Blind. (2021). 10 Things You Probably Don't Know About Anne Sullivan. Perkins History Museum. https://www.perkins.org/10-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-anne-sullivan/.

Last Updated: 22 Sept. 2023

Anne Sullivan Macy - The Fire of a Purpose

Thomas Wiggins - An Enslaved Prodigy

Frida Kahlo - Art & Identity from Pain