Alpha Kappa Alpha Mourns the Death of Dr. Donda West

Mother of hip-hop superstar championed the importance of education

International president Barbara A. McKinzie announced that Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and its 200,000 members worldwide are grieving over the death ofmember Dr. Donda West.

Dr. Donda West

Dr. West was a lifelong advocate of education and a model to thousands of young people she inspired during her more than 30 years as an educator. She launched her career at Morris Brown College in the early ‘70s. In 1980, she transferred to Chicago State University as a professor and was promoted to chairperson of the Department of English and Speech.

In this capacity, she shaped thousands of students. For her efforts, she received countless awards and tributes including Outstanding Educator of the Year and a Fulbright Scholar Award. She was also listed in Who’s Who Among Black Americans.

As an extension of her passion, in 2005, she founded the Kanye West Foundation.A conduit for promoting education, it was created to help “combat the severe dropout problem in high schools across the United States by developing student-centered programs geared towards increased literacy, heightened self-worth, independent thinking, and self-actualization through the arts.”

One of her greatest triumphs was raising her son, Kanye West, as a single mother. In May of this year, she penned the book, Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar. The book chronicled how she raised Kanye against the backdrop of an urban environment and the challenges faced. The book also underscored their unique mother-son bond and the love they shared and became a best seller.

In recent years, Dr. West left her post to help guide her son’s career and oversee the Foundation.

Dr. West was initiated in 1968 in Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Alpha Eta Chapter at Virginia Union University.