In an area called Emancipation Hall at the United States Capitol Visitor Center, a bronze sculpture of Helen Keller stands upon a podium, depicting the moment when she understood her first word: W-A-T-E-R. The statue is a reminder of Keller’s status as a leader for people with disabilities. But like other historical statues, many of which have been torn down due to the subject’s participation in slavery or genocide, this one also has a secret: Keller was an early proponent of the eugenicist movement.
“Uh …” said visitor center historian Hollis Hurlbut upon first discovering Keller’s problematic past.
Eugenics was a pseudoscientific project to “improve the human race,” which sought to manipulate population-wide genetic inheritance through forced sterilization and selective breeding, though its early momentum in the United States ended after the Nazi Holocaust demonstrated the monstrosity of eugenicist practices. People with disabilities, often deemed deficient in body or mind, were a central focus of the movement. They were classified as a problem for social sanitation and were therefore heavily subjected to cruel eugenicist procedures.
Hurlbut has closely guarded this secret out of a love for Keller’s advocacy, and he hopes this statue will continue to exist undamaged. While he feels the statue is secure for the moment, he says he does field the occasional question about Keller’s involvement in eugenics. “Thankfully, it’s not a hostile response. It’s a variation of the same response every time. ‘Her? Did anyone tell her? Did she know she’s …?’ And I have to say, yes, her, and yes, someone would have told her, and yes, she did know. At least I assume she would have. It’s obvious, right?”
“It’s linked and sourced on her Wikipedia. She once wrote a piece in ‘The New Republic’ supportive of infanticide in the case of ‘a poor, misshapen, paralyzed, unthinking creature.’ She continues to say that for such a ‘malformed idiot baby,’ there should be a jury of expert doctors to determine if the baby could become ‘fit to associate with his fellows, whether he is fit to live.’”
“If I can say anything to would-be statue destroyers: History is not black and white; it is muddy and gray. It is better to live with that problem than to take arms against the distant past. And I caution that anyone who wishes to be seen toppling a Heller Keller statue on anti-eugenicist grounds in this social climate does so at the acute risk of becoming friendless and unemployed.”