40 | JUNE 20 • 2024
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I

f you think anti-immi-
gration and antisemitic
sentiments are running
high now, look back to exactly
a century ago, a year when
one young and little-known
Detroit lawyer named
Theodore
Levin stood
against the
nativist tide.
Thousands
of Ku Klux
Klan mem-
bers paraded
through the
streets of many cities, includ-
ing Kalamazoo and Jackson.
The Klan controlled the
government of Indiana and
ruined that year’s Democratic
National Convention.
The nation seemed caught
up in nativist, anti-immigrant
and often anti-Jewish hysteria.
People, especially politi-
cians, were worried about
communist agents from the

Soviet Union secretly infil-
trating our society, and it was
often said that most of these
“Bolsheviks” were Jews.
With that background,
Congress was moving swift-
ly toward passing the most
severe anti-immigration bill
in our nation’s history: the
Immigration Act of 1924, then
usually known as the Johnson-
Reed Act, after its sponsors.
That act severely reduced
the flow of all newcomers and
set quotas that were based
on the 1890 census, before
most Eastern and Southern
Europeans, many of them
Jews, had begun to arrive.
That idea was extreme-
ly popular at the time.
Americans had returned from
Europe after World War I
and were anxious to return to
“normalcy” and resume their
isolationist outlook on the
world.

AN IMMIGRATION
ADVOCATE
But 27-year-old Theodore
“Ted” Levin thought differ-
ently. His parents had escaped
what had been the Russian
empire, met and married,
and lived in Chicago. Born
in 1897, he was the oldest of
eight children who, after his
father lost his job in a cigar
factory there, grew up in
near-poverty in Toronto and
then London, Ontario.
Eventually, Ted and his
brother Saul would move to
Detroit and put themselves
through law school at night
at the University of Detroit —
Ted by teaching himself how
to work in machine shops.
Detroit in the early 1920s
was one of the few places
that did not want severe
restrictions on immigration.
Thanks to the auto industry,
the Motor City’s population
was exploding, and immigrant

labor for the auto plants was
very much needed and wel-
comed.
The Levin brothers knew
all about the American dream
and wanted to preserve it for
others. They got their LL.B

A look at the amazing legacy of the man behind the
name of Detroit’s U.S. Courthouse: Theodore Levin.

Standing
Against the Tide

JACK LESSENBERRY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Theodore Levin

WIKIPEDIA

A courtroom in the
Theodore Levin
U.S. Courthouse in
Detroit

Legal Guide

continued on page 42