Helen Keller worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) for 44 years, from 1924 until 1968. The image that you see here is the first page of a folded card with Thanksgiving greetings from Helen and AFB circa 1932. The entire text of the card is transcribed below.
AFB’s commitment to helping those with vision loss and to challenging misconceptions of people who are blind or visually impaired remains as strong as when we began in 1921. We thank you for all your support and wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving!
Front page
DEAR FRIEND:
Please gather the braille characters from the vine that grows over this page.
Begin with the lowest cluster, W; then continue to read from left to right, from right to left, until the tendril disappears at the upper margin.
As you follow the vine upward you will find that you are gathering a Thanksgiving message of gratitude from your sightless fellow citizens, whose harvests of knowledge, useful activity and joy have been increased through your generous friendship.
Then will you open this folder and read with responsive mind and heart its message of hope for the future?
Thankfully yours,
HELEN KELLER
Page two
The blind man whom you see working at his punch press has been manipulating it skillfully for several years. Because he is a round peg in a round hole he continues to hold his position during the present unemployment crisis.
The agent who placed him at this machine was guided by intelligence as well as true understanding of the blind and their capabilities.
There are many sightless men and women in all parts of our country who are striving eagerly to become self-supporting. As their need grows more pressing they turn, naturally, to some local organizations for the blind, hoping that through the help of its agents they may find paying work.
These workers for the blind in their efforts to discover what occupations offer most opportunity to the sightless, appeal to our Foundation for vocational information and suggestions. They are writing us from all parts of the country that their need of our co-operation has never been so great as now.
The American Foundation for the Blind has made studies of hundreds of occupations in which blind men and women are now successfully engaged, and is constantly seeking new possibilities for sightless workers.
Page three
From our vocational records placement agents throughout the nation may gain important information concerning blind workers; knowledge which will help them to approach an employer from a practical standpoint, and hence with far greater probability of success in placing the sightless men and women in whom they are interested.
Before many years have passed the blind child shown below will have to face the world as a wage earner. His teacher may obtain vocational information from our Foundation which will suggest ways of training these little hands toward future independence.
* * *
You, Loyal Friend, have made it possible for us to render this great service to the blind. We ask you to continue to give our Foundation your support and friendship, to the end that we may continue to sow the seed of new effort in behalf of the sightless. For without such sowing their future years will be far less rich in the supreme Thanksgiving— the sense of well-being, the joy that comes through self-support.
Image: First page of a Thanksgiving card. Drawing of an amphora with a vine growing out of it. Its branch climbs up the left hand side and across the top of the page. Tendrils have alphabet and braille letters coming from them to spell out “We greet you and thank you.”
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