Don West

Writer, educator, civil rights activist, and trade union organizer Don West was born and raised in northern Georgia and was expelled from several schools before attending Vanderbilt University Divinity School. As a student at Vanderbilt, he participated in labor strikes and worked on Socialists causes. He cofounded Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which was based on educational models he witnessed in Denmark.

West's books of poetry include Crab-Grass (1931), Clods of Southern Earth (poetry, drawings by Harold Price) (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1946), and the posthumous collection No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems (edited by Jeff Biggers and George Brosi, 2004). West was also the author of Songs for Southern Workers: Songbook of the Kentucky Workers Alliance (1937, 1973).

West died in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1992.