A Hard Journey: The Life of Don West (review)

Don West preached the word of Jesus and Marx, envisioned socialism, yet often behaved as a stubborn individualist, and wrote poetry praising Appalachian people but excoriated their exploitation and lack of education. In short, West blended contradictions into a life of activism and artistry that defied categorization. In Hard Journey, James L. Lorence recovers (from the deep freeze of the Cold War and downplaying of radical activism in the South) the story of Don West from the 1920s to 1980s. Born in the mountains of North Georgia, West became an organizer for unions and educator for southern workers (on the premise of the Danish folk school). He also identified as an ordained minister and a poet. In all of these endeavors, Lorence concludes, West maintained a "noticeable chip on his shoulder"(xiii). This chip stemmed first from negative stereotypes of white Appalachian culture, and later grew to include his defense of a radical socialist critique of American society.

West's early life was one of impatience. While flouting authority during high school and college, West simultaneously steeped himself in humanities courses and rabble-rousing. Lorence mentions the ideas of dignity, hard work, self-sufficiency, and "an advanced concept of racial equality"(3) as forming the basis for West's Appalachian identity. Although somewhat abstract as values (most Americans might self-identify in the first three categories), this biography succeeds in showing how West put these values into action. His sense of urgency made him different from others because he rejected pragmatism in favor of running headlong into anyone who tried to curb the freedom of working people. After a brief stint with the Socialist Party in the early 1930s, he joined the Communists because, like him, they were "socialists in a hurry"(80) who "were doing things" and "stuck their necks out" (44). He headed the 1930s defense committee for Angelo Herndon (an African American on trial for leading a march of the unemployed in Atlanta) and intervened in several dangerous southern union campaigns.

Yet the Communist Party (CP) did not regard him as a very good organizer. One party leader complained that he often wrote rather than organized, and several examples show that West chafed at the discipline of the party. By 1937 West moved away from full-time CP activism, and by 1939, he officially left the party, though he would remain committed to its politics for the rest of his life. For example, he endorsed the CP's antiwar stance from 1939-1941 due to the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact and then again supported the switch back to the Popular Front win-the-war stance after the Nazis broke the agreement. Reactionary southerners and other Cold Warriors--in what he once termed the "anti-Don West united front" (147)--never let him forget his Communist past, making him, by the 1950s, both a "catalyst and an obstacle to realizing worker aspirations" (162). For better or worse, however, West branded himself a lifelong "agitator"; Marxism had become part of his core identity (123). Indeed, Lorence even suggests socialism became a religion for West that built on the "homespun" Christianity of his childhood (192).

West's religious faith raises more questions than it answers in Lorence's otherwise thorough account. The reader learns of West's radicalization during his religious studies at Vanderbilt University alongside other radicals-to-be like Howard Kester (who would organize sharecroppers) and Claude Williams (who would also organize workers and form the People's Institute of Applied Religion). Through his theological training and experiences in organizing the poor, West came to see Jesus as "the first guerilla Christian" (95). But Lorence only provides glimpses into how West interpreted Christianity, how he applied religion to his activism, and how he combined it with socialism and his mountain upbringing to become an organic intellectual and preacher. Did this blend of ideology lead to atheism? Or did West maintain a steadfast belief in God through a commitment to justice...