Donald Grady Davidson was born on 8 August 1893 in Campbellsville, Tennessee. Both his parents were teachers. He was classically trained in Latin, Greek, English, and mathematics.
Received both his Bachelor's (1917) and Master's (1922) degrees at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Served as a Lieutenant in the United States Army during World War I.
From 1923 to 1930 he served as editor of the Nashville Tennessean book page where he reviewed over 370 books. The book page was well-respected and was syndicated to other newspapers for a time.
Around 1930 Davidson became the leader of the Southern Agrarians and was largely responsible for the publication of the Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand. During the following nine years he defended the Agrarian philosophy from the lectern and wrote more than forty articles and essays that reflected the Agrarian position.
In 1938 he published Attack on Leviathan which was a collection of social criticism that followed the Agrarian tradition.
He published five volumes of poetry, An Outlawed Piper (1924), The Tall Men (1927), Lee in the Mountains and Other Poems (1938), The Long Street (1961), and Collected Poems: 1922-1961 (1966).
He also published Still Rebels, Still Yankees (1957), and his two-volume history The Tennessee (1946 and 1948).
Davidson received honorary doctorates from Cumberland University, Washington and Lee University, and Middlebury College.
Davidson died on 25 April 1968 in Nashville, Tennessee.