In a Letter to Reverend G. A. Zema, Helen Keller Denies That She Is a Communist Sympathizer

Despite Senator Joseph McCarthy’s personal demise, the spark of recrimination, fear, and mistrust he ignited continued to blaze throughout the 1950s. Civil liberties were trampled on, teachers were forced to sign loyalty oaths to the United States, and many books and other publications deemed “leftist” were banned and, in some cases, even burned. The famed social advocate Helen Keller, herself was tarnished by allegations that she had associated with the avowed Communist leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who was serving a twenty-eight-month prison term for “conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government.” Stricken as a young child with an illness that left her blind and deaf, Keller matured into a brilliant, articulate advocate for human rights, suffrage, and international peace. Keller was the spokesperson for the American Foundation for the Blind when the Flynn controversy erupted, and she worried it would adversely affect the Foundation. Although Keller had, in fact, greeted the Russian Revolution with great enthusiasm—“March on, O comrades, strong and free!” she exclaimed in 1920—she distanced herself from the Communists in the following letter to Reverend G. A. Zema, one of many supporters who had written to Keller demanding an explanation for her relationship with Flynn.

September 15, 1955

Dear Father Zema,

I want to thank you for writing me about the message I sent to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. This encounter with the Communists has taught me, as I should have known before, how exceedingly alert and careful we must be at all times. I will tell you how it happened.

I met Mrs. Flynn some forty years ago among a group who advocated the formation of unions for miners and other workers who were struggling for fair living conditions. I was trying to understand labor problems, strikes, and the tangled history that surrounds them. She was among those with whom I discussed these tormenting questions.

Since then I have had no contact with her and no correspondence except when I sent her a message of condolence several years ago after the death of her son. Since I joined the American Foundation for the Blind in 1924 I have been so absorbed in work for the exiles of the dark that I have had little time to devote to other activities.

In June of this year Mrs. Flynn’s sister with whom I had never had any connection wrote me that Mrs. Flynn was ill and in prison. Shortly afterwards a friend of Mrs. Flynn’s with whom also I had never had any connection asked me to send Mrs. Flynn a message for her 65th birthday. I felt that I could not be a Pharisee in spirit and refuse a friendly word to one whom I had seen long ago standing up for the rights of those who were wounded and crushed in the battle of economic life. I was thinking of her services at that time and not of what she has since done for the Communist Party.

I want you to know that if Mrs. Flynn was a member of or connected with the Communist Party at the time of our meetings forty years ago, I was totally unaware of the fact. I want also to assure you that no plan, purpose or conspiracy for the violent overthrow of the United States Government could awaken any response in my soul. I am not a Communist now and never have been a Communist. In responding to the plea for a message to Mrs. Flynn I let my heart rule my head and I am deeply troubled by the distress that it has caused among my friends and the friends of the blind.

Sincerely yours,

Helen Keller