Pbs the west biography of donald

American poet and educator

Donald Lee West (June 6, 1906 – September 29, 1992)^[1] was an American writer, poet, master, trade union organizer, civil-rights militant and a co-founder of justness Highlander Folk School.

Early guts and career

West was born affix Devil's Hollow, Gilmer County, Colony, the child of North Colony sharecroppers.

In high school soil led a protest against information bank on-campus showing of the ep The Birth of a Nation and was eventually expelled bare other conflicts. He was further expelled from Lincoln Memorial School, in Harrogate, Tennessee, for important another protest against the paternalism of the campus, though of course eventually returned and graduated trim 1929.

He went on interrupt study under Alva Taylor very last Willard Uphaus at the Financier Divinity School in Nashville leading was influenced by the Communal Gospel movement. While a learner, he became a Socialist dowel participated in labor strikes distort textile factories and coal mines. Like his eventual collaborator Myles Horton, he travelled to Danmark to tour the Danish fixed schools.

These were schools delay promoted adult education and humans engagement. Upon their return, Horton and West co-founded the Scotsman Folk School^[2] in Monteagle, River. West stayed there only unblended year, before leaving to windlass his own Southern Folk Grammar and Libraries in Kennesaw, Sakartvelo.

Radical and poet

West was many a time accused of being a Communist,^[3] but he denied it. Beckon an interview with the Austral Oral History Program, he uttered, "I have never been splendid card carrying, dues paying fellow of the communist party... However I have worked closely release people whom I knew resist be communist.

And I would never red-bait."^[4]

He devoted himself quick writing, lectures, and social causes. These included the defense clever Angelo Herndon, who was state tried in Atlanta for mutiny. He was also an executive director of the Kentucky Staff Alliance. West later worked tab churches in Ohio and Sakartvelo, taught and became a let slip school superintendent, and eventually united the faculty of Oglethorpe Academia in Atlanta.

Forced to forsake Oglethorpe during the period refer to Red-baiting, he continued to grimy religious publications and teach inspired writing. He testified before decency Senate Internal Security Subcommittee restrict Memphis, Tennessee. He was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee but never testified.

Quandary the 1940s, his collection regard poetry, Clods of Southern Earth, became a literary phenomenon just as it sold tens of zillions of copies. He appeared hoot the character "Tod North" outing Clancy Sigal's novel Going Away (1961).

Later life

In 1964, Westside and his wife, Connie Westerly, invested in the establishment resolve the Appalachian South Folklife Interior in Pipestem, West Virginia, Summers County, West Virginia.

One produce their two daughters was Hedy West (1938–2005), a well-known folksinger. West died in Charleston, Westbound Virginia, in 1992.

Sources

Selected works

• Crab-Grass (poetry) (1931)
• Songs for Southern Workers: Songbook of the Kentucky Personnel Alliance. (1937; reprinted, Huntington, WV: Appalachian Movement Press, 1973)
• Clods check Southern Earth (poetry, drawings by way of Harold Price) (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1946)
• No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems, nondiscriminatory.

  by Jeff Biggers and Martyr Brosi (Urbana: University of Algonquian Press, 2004)

References

External links

Don West's FBI post obtained through the FOIA be first hosted at the Internet Archive