Retired Bowdoin Civil Rights Professor Views Today’s Fight as Less Likely to Bend Toward Justice.

A sobering interview with my father, Dan Levine. Although grim, please consider letting it fuel your resolve to continue to fight for democracy!

Karen Levine Egee

DAN LEVINE

My father, now 90 and retired for the past 20 years, was the Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of History and Political Science at Bowdoin College. He brought the study of the Civil Rights Movement and Afro-American history courses to Bowdoin College near the start of his career, in 1966. He published Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement [Rutgers, 1999] about the civil rights activist who organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King made his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

After participating in April 5’s Hands Off rally on the mall in Brunswick, carrying his “No to Tyranny” sign, he told me excitedly: “This reminded me of being at the March on Washington.

Growing up, I had often heard my father talk about that march. “At both protests,” he said, “the spirit was celebratory, joyful. At the March on Washington, everybody was aware that the crowd was Black and white — a Black-and-white unity celebration. But the feeling at both events was that everybody was there for the same cause — and joyous that they were there.”

His comparison made me wonder: how similar are these two movements — the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and today’s pro-democracy, anti-fascism resistance movement?

During Trump’s first term, my father often spoke about how even though people thought things were bad, this was not as bad as they had been in this country, for instance during slavery, and that now (Trump’s first term) was likely just a rough period that would pass in the context of overall great progress in our country. Indeed, it seemed so for a while, with Biden elected in 2020.

So before doing this interview, I had fully expected my father to tell me more about how the current resistance movement reminded him of the Civil Rights Movement and to find this comparison gave him optimism about the success of our current movement. I expected him to draw parallels, to talk of how we learn from each resistance movement and how that helps with the next crisis. How wrong I was! Instead, my father sees primarily profound differences, not parallels, and is not hopeful at all about democracy surviving.

My father explained some of the differences: “After all the murders and beatings of civil right workers, the sit-ins, freedom rides, demonstrations against Jim Crow, for voting rights, the whole panoply of Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) seemed to be having some effect, climaxing in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Furthermore, there was support, sometimes grudging, of people in power. 

Where do you go now to protest an end of democracy?  Where are the segregated lunch counters? Does carrying a “No Tyranny” sign on the Brunswick Mall have any effect? Yes, there are some people in Congress, even on the Supreme Court being more and more explicit about what is happening, but they seem to have no effect either.”

When I asked if he was optimistic in those days, he replied: "I never even thought about it not working. The fight was going on. You just did what you could. And progress was being made. We could see changes happening.”

Now we are in the reverse situation. We see thing getting worse, democracy falling away and fascism taking over. In fact, my father believes we have already essentially lost a functioning democracy. He told me bluntly: “The American Constitution has been destroyed. The MAGA people will manipulate the 2026 election. There may not even be an election. The Supreme Court has given them cover. They have taken too much power, and now people believe them.”

I asked my father if he thought Martin Luther King would have been shocked today, and he said yes. He said he too was shocked. “I would not have believed that the American Constitution could be destroyed in three months. I thought the institutions were stronger than that, no matter how rabid the president was, and how much power they had in Congress and the Supreme Court.”

He referenced Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, noting that in 1863 Lincoln spoke of “a nation so conceived and so dedicated” and wondered whether it “can long endure.” My father added, “Today, I’m not sure it can.”

So how could this have happened, what made this possible?

“Lyndon Johnson said that the Civil Rights Movement had given the South to the Republican party ‘for a generation.' In fact, it has proven to be permanently. Also, there was the reaction to having a Black president.”

I asked him what he saw as functioning differently now. Had he not thought Congress would cave so readily and go along with a president like Trump?

“No, I didn’t think so. Everything changed. The Congress changed, the Supreme Court changed. The institutions changed. The tactics — the uh... I want a word, I can’t think of it at the moment, a word more than awful. The reprehensible actions of the Republican Party of MAGA. I didn’t believe they could possibly go so far so fast.”

And yet he still goes to protests. He still holds his “No to Tyranny” sign. And he supports my advocacy work, reading each article I write. “People are going to make their efforts,” he said.

It is certainly grim to hear him explain ways in which this fight is so different, and how much less certain he is we will succeed. But, as I write and speak out and attend protests, I feel that same moral imperative my father describes feeling in 1964 — the conviction that you find where you can make a difference, and you get to work.

As John Lewis said near the end of his life: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”

And perhaps, if enough of us keep showing up — with our skills, our energy, our voices — history may one day look back and say that we got through these dark and dangerous years because ordinary people refused to give up. That we stood our ground. That we carried the torch forward.