Helen Keller Quotes
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
There was a Sedition law which made it a Federal felony to encourage anyone not to join or support the military during the First World War. The Socialist Politician and Candidate for President, Eugene Debbs and others, were jailed for less seditious statements. Helen Keller was a remarkable woman who was blind and deaf, and yet she became a great orator and social reformer. The administration died not relish the reaction if they put this popular, blind, deaf woman in jail so she was never charged. The law of course was unconstitutional, but it took years to reach that determination. Until then, the Sedition Act was one of the worst examples of infringement in American history since the original Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adams.
Helen Keller, 1880-1968, Social Reformer & Feminist, Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, January 5, 1916
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
To support the war effort, the most militant suffragettes ceased anti Government militancy. The suffragette movement was split by WWI and the issue of pacifism. See {621266} for the anti-war factional view.
First woman elected to Congress. She was one of a handful of Congressman who opposed the WWI declaration. She was the only member of the House to oppose FDR’s request for a Declaration of War against Japan after Pearl Harbor.
La Guardia had been a "hawk" in World War I.
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and hearing after a bout of illness at the age of nineteen months. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan, who taught her language, including reading and writing; Sullivan's first lessons involved spelling words on Keller's hand to show her the names of objects around her. She also learned how to speak and to understand other people's speech using the Tadoma method. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, she attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1924 until 1968, during which time she toured the United States and traveled to 39 countries around the globe advocating for those with vision loss.
