Under the Southern Cross: Helen Keller, disability politics, and apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT

In 1951, deaf/blind activist Helen Keller, then seventy years old, made a 10-week tour of South Africa. She visited nearly thirty schools and institutions for the deaf and blind and attended nearly fifty meetings. Keller is well known in disability history, women’s history, and progressivism. Less well known is her host, Arthur Blaxall, an Anglican priest in South Africa who was an advocate for the deaf and blind and an opponent of apartheid. Keller’s South African trip was the culmination of an epistolary friendship between the two disability activists that spanned some thirty years, from 1931 to the 1960s. This visit is documented in correspondence between Blaxall and Keller, as well as in a published commemorative volume that includes writings from Blaxall and Keller, Helen Keller at the Southern Cross (1952). This article argues that the two activists opposed apartheid through their understanding of the plight of the non-seeing and non-hearing. The associations they forged addressing disability provided venues and frameworks for a developing critique of racial inequities. While we identify Keller’s radical vision, we also point to her limits, showing the ways in which her own hopes and dreams for her visit to Africa grew out of colonial cultural repertoires.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• apartheid
• blindness
• deafness
• Helen Keller

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sarah Gertrude Millin, ‘The Meaning of Helen Keller’, in, The Visit of Helen Keller to South Africa, Souvenir Programme, Box 40, folder 5, Helen Keller Archives (digitised), American Federation for the Blind, New York, New York (hereafter AFB).

2 Kim E Nielsen, The Radical Lives of Helen Keller, New York: NYU Press, 2004, p 9; Helen Keller, Story of My Life, New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1903.

3 Nielsen, Radical Lives, p 11; Paul K Longmore and Lauri Umansky (eds), The New Disability History: American Perspectives, New York: NYU Press, 2001; Paul K Longmore, Why I Burned My Book, and Other Essays, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003, pp 1–2; Kim E Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2012. See also Rachel Mildred Hartig, ‘Crossing the Divide: Helen Keller and Yvonne Pitrois Dialogue on Diversity’, Sign Language Studies, 7, Winter 2007, pp 177–185.

4 See Georgina Kleege, ‘Helen Keller and “The Empire of the Normal”’, American Quarterly, 52, June 2000, pp 322–325. See also, Marie Dominique Garnier, ‘En Route: Helen Keller’s Travels’, Studies in Travel Writing, 24, 2020, pp 222–237, which links Keller’s politics, travel, and deaf/blind epistemology.

5 Arthur Blaxall and Helen Keller, Helen Keller Under the Southern Cross, Cape Town: Juta, 1952, pp 23, 100.

6 The photographer Margaret Bourke-White, who visited South Africa in 1950, had a similar experience. See Alex Lichtenstein and Rick Halpern, Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.

7 Shaun Grech and Karen Soldatic, ‘Introduction’, in Soldatic and Grech (ed), Disability and Colonialism: (Dis)encounters and Anxious Intersectionalities, New York: Routledge, 2016.

8 President’s Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, Washington, DC: GPO, 1947, pp 146, 148. The literature on the confluence of the Cold War and the early civil rights movement is enormous. See, especially, Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001; Penny M Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Works with a particular focus on U.S.-South Africa relations include Thomas Borstelmann, Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle: The Unites States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, Francis Njubi Nesbit, Race for Sanctions: African Americans Against Apartheid, 1946–1994, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, and Nicholas Grant, Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

9 Joseph D Bibb, ‘An African Tyrant’, Pittsburgh Courier, March 10, 1951, p 9; Borstelmann, Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle, p 84.

10 Nielsen, Radical Lives, p 10; Helen Keller to Jo and Florence Davidson, August 1, 1951, Box 52, folder 10, AFB.

11 Arthur Blaxall to HK, Aug. 31, 1937, Box 11, folder 5, AFB; AB to M. Robert Barnett, Sep. 6, 1950, Oct. 25, 1950, Box 48, Folder 4, AFB; John Wilson to HK, February 27, 1951, Box 27, Folder 4, AFB.

12 Waldo MacEager to HK, June 27, 1951, Box 27, folder 4, AFB; Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, pp 2, 7, 19, 24, 33.

13 Keller, Story of My Life, pp 117, 36; Helen Keller speech, March 1951, Box 213, folder 14, ABF; Natal Daily News, April 17, 1951, Box 250, folder 1, ABF.

14 Keller, Story of My Life, pp 49, 69, 75, 105, 296.

15 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 32; HK to Oswald Garrison Villard, Feb. 13, 1916, Box 113, folder 17, AFB; Kim E Nielsen, ‘The Southern Ties of Helen Keller’, Journal of Southern History, 73, November 2007, pp 783–806.

16 The Crisis, June 1916, p 70; July 1916, p 133.

17 HK to Jo Davidson, January 24, 1951, Box 52, folder 10, AFB, pp 3–4; ‘Letter from a Lady’, New York Amsterdam News, Jan. 27, 1951, p 1.

18 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, pp 32–33.

19 HK to Jo and Florence Davidson, July 9, 1950, Box 52, folder 9, AFB; HK to AB, Jan. 12, 1951, Box 48 folder 4; Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948, p 33.

20 Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, p 111.

21 Linda Chisholm, ‘Education, Punishment and the Contradictions of Penal Reform: Alan Paton and Diepkloof Reformatory, 1934–1948’, Journal of Southern African Studies 17(1), 1991, pp 23–42; Alan Paton, Diepkloof: Reflections of Diepkloof Reformatory, Clyde Broster (comp and ed), Cape Town: David Philip, 1986, p 9; HK to Davidsons, July 9, 1950.

22 In her autobiography, Keller wrote: ‘As the cool stream gushed over one hand [Anne Sullivan] spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. 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 thought; 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’, Keller, Story of My Life, p 11. This is clearly echoed in Paton’s novel.

23 Paton, Reflections of Diepkloof Reformatory, p 21.

24 Keller, Story of My Life, p 20; Alan Paton, foreword to Under the Southern Cross, np; Paton, Reflections of Diepkloof Reformatory, p 21.

25 Helen Keller, My Religion, New York: Doubleday, 1927, frontispiece, p 45; Nielsen, Radical Lives, pp 20–21: Joseph Lash, Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980, p 553.

26 Lash, Helen and Teacher, pp 553, 555; Keller, My Religion, 207.

27 Helen Keller, ‘Sailing for Africa in a Week, is Particularly Anxious to “See”a Zebra’, New York Times, Feb. 8, 1951, Press Clippings, Box 250, folder 1, AFB.

28 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 51; AB to Robert M. Barnett, Nov. 6, 1950; HK to AB, Oct. 26, 1950, Box 48, folder 4, AFB.

29 AB to Alfred Allen, November 19, 1950; Alfred Allen to AB, November 27, 1950; HK to AB, January 12, 1951: AB to Polly Thompson, April 15, 1951, Box 48, folder 4, AFB; Natal Daily News, April 17, 1951, April 18, 1951.

30 Bantu World, Feb. 10, 1951, press clippings, Box 250, folder 1, AFB.

31 Schedule with notes, nd., Box 40, folder 4; HK to Mr. Hill, December 23, 1950, Box 59, folder 8; Photograph, Bloemfontein, Box 58, folder 1, AFB.

32 AB to Polly Thompson, December 29, 1950, Box 48, folder 4, AFB.

33 Adamastor [pseud.], White Man Boss, p 24; HK to Hill, Dec. 23, Box 59, folder 8; HK to the editor of Dagbreek, January 12, 1951, Box 40, folder 4; HK to Jo and Florence Davidson, August 1, 1951, Box 52, folder 10.

34 HK to Jo and Florence Davidson, August 1, 1951, Box 52, folder 10, AFB; Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 16; Cape Argus, March 30, 1951.

35 The Torch, February 27, 1951, p 4; P.F. van Mekarh to HK, March 11, 1951, HK to van Mekarh, n.d., Box 40, folder 2, AFB; Cape Argus, May 22, 1951; Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 39.

36 John Wilson to HK, February 27, 1951, Box 27, folder 4, AFB; Rand Daily Mail, April 28, 1951; HK to Jo and Florence Davidson, August 1, 1951.

37 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 25; East London Daily Dispatch, April 12, 1951, April 13, 1951.

38 John Wilson to HK, February 27, 1951; East London Daily Dispatch, April 13, 1951.

39 Sarah F Rose, ‘Work’, in Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin (eds), Keywords for Disability Studies, New York, NYU Press, 2015, p 187; Sarah F Rose, No Right To Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s–1930s, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017, p 2.

40 Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, pp 118–121; Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 48; Helen Keller’s speech to the blind at Ezenzelini, May 12, 1951, Box 213, folder 14, AFB.

41 HK to Mr. Van Graan, nd (c. May 1951), Box 40, Folder 2; HK to Jo and Florence Davidson, August 1, 1951, AFB.

42 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 35.

43 East London Daily Dispatch. April 12, 1951. It is worth noting that in April 1951, the ANC Youth League led a protest march in Duncan Village, though we can find no trace of this in Keller’s archive. A year later, there was a police massacre of protestors on the very site at which Helen spoke: Leslie Bank and Benedict Carton, ‘Forgetting Apartheid: History, Culture, and the Body of a Nun’, Africa, 86, August 2016, pp 472–503.

44 East London Daily Dispatch, April 12, 1951; Arthur Blaxall, Suspended Sentence, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965, p 73; AB to HK/PT, Sep. 21, 1957, AFB; Rand Daily Mail, Oct. 18, 1963.

45 24th Annual Report of the Athlone School for the Blind, April 1950-March 1951, Box 250, folder 2, pp 3–4: Speech, April 2, 1951, Box 40, folder 2, AFB; Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 68, photo 13.

46 Shannon Walters, Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014, p 25; see also Erica Fretwell, ‘Stillness is a Move: Helen Keller and the Kinaesthetics of Autobiography’, American Literary History, 25, Fall 2013, pp 563–587; Nielsen, Radical Lives, p 131.

47 Keller, Story of My Life, pp 133, 12; Jim Swan, ‘Touching Words: Helen Keller, Plagiarism, Authorship’, in Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (eds), The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature, Durham: Duke University Press, 1994, p 23.

48 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, pp 17–18.

49 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, pp 28–30, 41; Florence M Blaxall and Monica Hope, Mapupula, the One Who Touches, London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1948.

50 List of questions and answers for Helen Keller’s visit to Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, April 3, 1951, Box 40, folder 2; Natal Daily News, April 17, 1951, Box 250, folder 1, AFB.

51 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 25; Press clipping, Arthur Blaxall, July 13, 1951, Box 216, folder 5; John Wilson to HK, June 12, 1951, Box 27, folder 4, AFB.

52 HK to AB, draft, July 5, 1951, Box 48, folder 4, AFB; Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 36. It is worth noting that the latter was published in South Africa, not the United States, so Keller made these feeling well-known to her hosts.

53 Blaxall and Keller, Under the Southern Cross, p 50.

54 For a representative treatment of this transnational dynamic, see Grant, Winning Our Freedoms Together.

55 Arthur W Blaxall, Ten Cameos from Darkest Africa: Stories of Pioneer Work Among the African and Coloured Blind, NP: The Lovedale Press, 1937, p. i. Admittedly, Blaxall was making a play on words here, but the term ‘darkest’ still conflated blindness with the alleged spiritual impoverishment of non-Christian Africans.

56 Arthur W Blaxall, ‘Candid Thoughts on Non-Violence’, The New Republic, December 29, 1952; Arthur Blaxall, ‘Now that Congress is Over’, July 13, 1955, Folder 118/45, Records of the American Committee on Africa, Part 2: Correspondence and Subject Files on South Africa, 1952–1985; AB form letter to HK and PT, Jan. 1, 1955; AB to HK/PT, Aug. 10, 1954, AB to HK/PT, Sep. 21, 1957, all in Box 48, folder 4, AFB; Rand Daily Mail, Oct. 18, 1963.

57 ‘The Common Touch’, Treason Trial Bulletin, No. 4, October 1958, p 9.

58 Nielsen, Radical Lives, p 139; Grant, Winning Our Freedoms Together; Nesbitt, Race for Sanctions; Walter A Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lara Kriegel

Lara Kriegel is Professor of History and English at Indiana University, where she also serves as an editor of Victorian Studies. A sociocultural historian of modern Britain and its empire, she has published on a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century topics. Her first monograph, Grand Designs: Labor, Empire, and the Museum in Victorian Culture (Duke, 2007) addressed material culture in the making of industrial Britain and metropolitan London. Her second book, The Crimean War and its Afterlife: Making Modern Britain (Cambridge: 2022) places the mid-Victorian conflict at the centre of the formation of national institutions, myths, and narratives that persist to the present. She is, at present, editing Volume 4 (1750–1900) of The New Cambridge History of Britain (series editor, Miles Taylor). Kriegel has been fascinated by Helen Keller and other leading women enshrined as exemplars in modern history, including Amelia Earhart, Florence Nightingale, and Eleanor Roosevelt, having read about them in childhood through Dell Yearling biographies. She was, therefore, fascinated to learn about Keller’s trip to South Africa, which complicated received childhood narratives and introduced her to the field of disability history. She hopes to sustain engagement with disability history in her teaching, editing, and research in the future.

Alex Lichtenstein

Alex Lichtenstein is Professor of History and American Studies at Indiana University and the former editor-in-chief of the American Historical Review (2017–2021). He has written extensively about race relations in the U.S. labour movement, interracial agrarian radicalism, early civil rights struggles, and the impact of anticommunism on the labour and civil rights movements, in both the U.S. and South Africa. Recent works include Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid (with Rick Halpern) based on a photography exhibited curated at Indiana University and in South Africa, and Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory, a collaboration with his brother, photojournalist Andrew Lichtenstein. His essays on South African history and politics have appeared in the LA Review of Books, the Johannesburg Review of Books, and Public Books. His current research focuses on the history of Black trade unions under apartheid. He has two projects in the works: a short study of the Durban strikes of 1973, and a longer history of Black workers and industrial relations in twentieth-century South Africa, tentatively entitled Making Apartheid Work.