The bronze statue of Helen Keller that sits in the U.S. Capitol shows the blind girl standing at a water pump. It depicts the moment in 1887 when her teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled "W-A-T-E-R" into one of her 7-year-old pupil's hands while water streamed into the other. This was Keller's awakening, when she made the connection between the word Sullivan spelled and the tangible substance splashing from the pump. Less well known is the fact that when this blind-deaf visionary learned that poor people were more likely to be blind than others, she set off down a pacifist, socialist path that broke the boundaries of her time -- and continues to challenge ours today.
