Anne Sullivan Macy (born as Johanna Mansfield Sullivan; April 14, 1866 – October 20, 1936) was an American teacher best known for being the instructor and lifelong companion of Helen Keller. At age five, Sullivan contracted trachoma which left her partially blind and without reading or writing skills. Sullivan received her education as a student of the Perkins School for the Blind. Soon after graduation at age 20, she became a teacher to Keller. She was the eldest child of Thomas and Alice (née Cloesy) Sullivan, who had emigrated from Ireland to the United States during the Great Famine.
At age five, Sullivan contracted the bacterial eye disease trachoma, which caused many painful infections and, over time, made her nearly blind. When she was eight, her mother died from tuberculosis, and her father abandoned the children two years later for fear that he could not raise them on his own. The investigation was led by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, then chairman of the board, and Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston.
In February 1877, Sullivan was sent to the Soeurs de la Charité hospital in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she had another unsuccessful operation. While there, she helped the nuns in the wards and went on errands in the community until July of that year, when she was sent to the city infirmary, where she had one more unsuccessful operation. She was then transferred back to Tewksbury under duress. In June 1886, graduating at age 20 as the valedictorian of her class, Sullivan stated: