1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [68]
Keller, Helen (1880–1968) Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Helen Adams Keller was stricken with a scarlet fever at 19 months old, leaving her blind, deaf, and mute. Thanks to a remarkable teacher, Anne Sullivan, who remained with Keller from 1887 until Sullivan’s death in 1936, Keller learned to communicate and, at 14, enrolled in the Wright Humason School for the Deaf in New York City, went on to the Cambridge (Massachusetts) School for Young Ladies, enrolled in Radcliffe College in 1900, and graduated cum laude in 1904. Having acquired skills no one so severely disabled could ever have expected to attain, Keller decided to share her experience, not only to help and to inspire other disabled persons, but to demonstrate to the sighted and hearing world that disability did not diminish intellectual capacity or humanity. She became an enormously popular author and (through an interpreter) lecturer. Her activism brought about an international revolution in the treatment of the deaf and the blind.
Kellogg, Frank (1856–1937) Kellogg was U.S. secretary of state from 1925 to 1929 in the cabinet of President Calvin Coolidge. In 1928, he concluded with French foreign minister Aristide Briand the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, a multilateral agreement to prohibit war as an instrument of national policy. The pact was signed by 62 nations, including all of those that would be the major combatants of World War II. For his effort, Kellogg received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929.
Kellogg, W. K. (1860–1951) With his brother John Harvey Kellogg, Will Keith Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906 in Battle Creek, Michigan. It subsequently became the Kellogg Company. Kellogg popularized toasted cereal—mainly in the form of cornflakes—especially for breakfast. He created a commercial food empire and changed the eating habits of virtually all Americans.
Kennan, George F. (1904–2005) A Princeton-educated diplomat, Kennan was a specialist in Soviet politics and, after World War II, while stationed in Moscow, transmitted to Washington, D.C., in February 1946 the so-called “long telegram,” in which he analyzed the Soviet psyche and advocated developing a policy of “containment,” opposing Soviet Communist expansion wherever and whenever it appeared in the world. This policy was further articulated in a famous article published under the pseudonym “X” in the journal Foreign Affairs in July 1947. Containment became the cornerstone of U.S. Cold War policy for half a century.
Kennedy, Edward (1932– ) U.S. senator from Massachusetts since 1963, Edward “Teddy” Kennedy is the only surviving brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassination. Edward Kennedy was the frontrunner for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination until, on the night of July 18, 1969, he accidentally drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, after a party. His passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. Kennedy was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident, and although he was reelected to the Senate in 1970, his presidential aspirations were dashed.
Kennedy, John F. (1917–1963) Taking the oath of office at 43, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the nation’s youngest elected president. His assassination, on a visit to Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963, also made him the youngest to die. Youth and the determination, idealism, and optimism of youth were at the center of the Kennedy presidency, which inspired the nation to strive toward extraordinary achievements ranging from progress in social justice to the exploration of outer space.
Kennedy, Joseph P. (1888–1969) The grandson of Irish immigrants, Kennedy was a Massachusetts businessman, whose enterprises included banking, ship building, motion picture production, investing, and probably Prohibition-era bootlegging. A major contributor