Today in Labor History June 27, 1880: Helen Keller was born (1880-1968) in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In addition to being an early advocate for disability rights, she was also a radical socialist for women’s suffrage and birth control, the rights of workers and world peace. She supported the NAACP and was a founding member of the ACLU. She also joined the IWW and wrote for them from 1916-1918. In 1933, the Nazi Youth burned her book, “How I Became Socialist.” However, like many people of her era, from both the right and the left, she supported the eugenics movement and once claimed that the lives of infants with severe cognitive impairments were not worth saving. She published 12 books. Her most famous was her autobiography, “The Story of My Life,” (1903).