Elliott H. Levitas

Elliott Harris Levitas (December 26, 1930 – December 16, 2022) He was in the United States Air Force from 1955 to 1958.

Political career Levitas was a delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which nominated the Lyndon B. Johnson/Hubert Humphrey ticket, the first Democratic slate to lose the electoral votes of Georgia since the Reconstruction era.

State legislature Levitas was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1964 and served from 1965 to 1974. Early in his first term, he gained notoriety for voting in support of civil rights activist Julian Bond, who was in a contested battle to be assume his seat following his election to the legislature. Levitas was one of only five white legislators to vote in support of seating Bond. In all, Levitas served five terms in the legislature. His most notable case, Cobell v. Norton, involved a lawsuit of the Blackfeet tribe against the U.S. Government over the amount owed to the tribe for land that had been taken and used for various industrial purposes. The successful $3.4 billion verdict was at the time the largest ever class-action award against the U.S. government.

Death Levitas died on December 16, 2022, at age 91, ten days before his 92nd birthday. He was buried at Arlington Memorial Park near Atlanta. Each year, his alma mater, Emory University, issues an award in Levitas’s honor to the outstanding graduating senior political science major.