History does have a sense of humor

Helen Keller, a heroine for the disabled, is on the back of the commemorative quarter for Alabama, one of the nation's most conservative states. She was also a member of the Socialist Party, an ardent anti-war feminist, and a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

You won't hear much about those things at Ivy Green, her childhood home in Tuscumbia. The people there prefer to tell about her father's service in the Confederate army and the water pump where she learned the concept of language as a child.

Auburn University history professor Wayne Flynt provides the necessary context: "She was very politically liberal for her time, and that's what makes her controversial in Alabama today. Does Alabama really want an extremely liberal woman who was a suffragist, who was a pacifist and didn't want to go to war, who attacked big business for child labor?"

Child labor is controversial?