Donald Lee West (June 6, 1906 – September 29, 1992)[1] was an American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer, civil-rights activist and a co-founder of the Highlander Folk School.
In high school he led a protest against an on-campus showing of the film The Birth of a Nation and was eventually expelled for other conflicts.
He was also expelled from Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrogate, Tennessee, for leading another protest against the paternalism of the campus, though he eventually returned and graduated in 1929.
He went on to study under Alva Taylor and Willard Uphaus at the Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville and was influenced by the Social Gospel movement.
West later worked in churches in Ohio and Georgia, taught and became a public school superintendent, and eventually joined the faculty of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.