Early Life
West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up in Sacramento, California, where he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School. His father was a general contractor for the Defense Department, and his mother was a teacher and a principal. Irene B. West Elementary School in Elk Grove, California, is named for her.
As a young man, West marched in civil rights demonstrations and organized protests demanding black studies courses at his high school, where he was class president. He later wrote that, in his youth, he admired "the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party and the livid black theology of James Cone."
In 1970, after graduating from John F. Kennedy High School, he enrolled at Harvard University and took classes from philosophers Robert Nozick and Stanley Cavell. In 1973, he graduated magna cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization. West credited Harvard with exposing him to a broader range of ideas, influenced by his professors as well as the Black Panther Party. West says his Christianity prevented him from joining the BPP, instead choosing to work in local breakfast, prison, and church programs.
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