Jesse Stuart and Don West

Abstract

Jesse Stuart and Don West James M. Gifford (bio) and Erin R. Kazee (bio) The relationship between Jesse Stuart and Don West ran both historical and emotional gauntlets. Set against the backdrop of the Depression, World War II, unionization, desegregation, and a growing concern for the underserved and underprivileged, their writings reflected vastly different world views: West politicized his literature; Stuart romanticized his. The result was the dissolution of a strong friendship between two men who, for all their diverging opinions, were more similar than they wanted to admit. In their undergraduate days, they were closer than brothers, until politics, literature, and life split their friendship. As older men, they tried to reclaim—or at least remember—their affection for one another. Both were born in 1906 on hillside farms—Stuart in W-Hollow, Greenup County, Kentucky, and West in Devil’s Hollow, Gilmer County, Georgia. Both were raised in extended, traditional mountain families and received their early education in one-room schools. When they met as freshmen at Lincoln Memorial University in 1926, poor and willing to accept any job they could find, their similar backgrounds and self-confident personalities cemented their camaraderie. They milked cows, hoed corn, dug ditches, and delivered laundry, but they put their hearts into writing and honing the philosophies that would ultimately tear them apart. At the time, Stuart’s letters to his family were filled with praise for West’s character and accomplishments. The “two old Bulls from the woods” hiked, ran track, and commiserated together. Although he had his own financial and personal difficulties, Don loaned Jesse money and offered advice on topics that ranged from dating to religion. When Don secretly eloped with lmu coed Connie Adams, Jesse served as the best man at the ceremony. Later, University officials discovered the marriage and Stuart wrote in a letter, “took Connie’s scholarship away from her. At the same time, [Don] was expelled for participating in a student strike that closed the campus down for a couple of weeks.” Stuart’s letter maintains that with help from Stuart and others, he was reinstated and eventually [End Page 31] graduated. In 1929, Don West hitchhiked to Vanderbilt to enter the Divinity School. Jesse followed a few years later when he decided to pursue an M.A. in English for the 1931–1932 school year. Don was studying religion, and they often discussed his role in the socialist movement. Although Jesse felt that Don did not articulate his ideology very clearly, he still respected him as “a natural born leader” and predicted that “if the socialists ever do get in power, West is liable to be president of the United States.” Jesse “went through hell” at Vanderbilt and “would have starved” without Don West, who purchased a meal ticket for Stuart that provided one meal per day. Furthermore, he often brought Jesse food when they visited. Stuart completed a year of graduate work and returned home after the 1932 spring semester ended. That fall, he became Kentucky’s youngest superintendent. Meanwhile, Don West was making significant progress, too. He taught briefly at the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County and then opened the famous Highlander Folk School at Monteagle, Tennessee, with Myles Horton. Throughout the 1930s, Jesse and Don spent a great deal of time explaining and defending themselves to one another. “Stuart, you still have a great misunderstanding of me and my work and purpose … [but] I make no more personal fights,” West wrote. Nonetheless, he felt that if Jesse “could ever get away from being so damned self-centered [he] could be a power for the cause.” Jesse, in his own way, also tried to acknowledge and look past their differences, saying simply, “I think he is very wrong and of course he thinks I’m wrong.” Still, their political opinions often colored their literary analyses. For example, in January 1933, Don West expressed disappointment that Stuart had “not yet grasped the simplest elementary principle of social consciousness” and hoped that he would “get away from the romantic sentimentalizing about the mountains.” That was a year of financial suffering for both of them. West asked Stuart to loan him one–hundred dollars...