Lawrence William Levine was a celebrated American historian. He was born in Manhattan and died in Berkeley, California.
A model of the engaged scholar throughout his life, Levine lived both his scholarship and his politics. From the very outset, he immersed himself in the political life of Berkeley – in, for example, a sleep-in in the rotunda of the state capitol in Sacramento to press for fair housing legislation, and the sit-ins in Berkeley organized by CORE to force stores to hire black people.
He participated in the march from Selma to Montgomery, expressing his solidarity with the civil rights movement. During the Free Speech upheaval at Berkeley, he came to the defense of students protesting a ban on political activity on campus in support of the civil rights movement.
He received numerous awards and accolades over the course of his career, most of which was spent in the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Among the honors bestowed upon him were a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1983, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, election as President of the Organization of American Historians in 1992, recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1994, the 2005 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Historical Association, and the posthumous designation of the Lawrence W. Levine Award, which is given annually by the OAH to the author of the best book in American cultural history.
His books include: • Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last Decade, 1915-1925. Oxford University Press, 1965. • Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Oxford University Press, 1978. • Highbrow/Lowbrow. Harvard University Press, 1990. • The Unpredictable Past. Oxford University Press, 1993. • The Opening of the American Mind. Beacon Press, 1997. • [with Cornelia R. Levine] The people and the President: America's Conversation with FDR. Beacon Press, 2002.