Helen Keller (1880–1968)

In 1909 Helen Keller joined the Socialist party in Massachusetts. She had read Marx and Engels in German braille, and welcomed the Revolution in Russia in 1917. Keller was an activist for racial and sexual equality, and as an avowed socialist she had such left-leaning opinions that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on her. In 1964 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.