Watkins was born in Parsons, Kansas to Levi Watkins, Senior (1911–1994) and Lillian Varnado (1917–2013). The family moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where his father served as the sixth president of Alabama State College from 1962 to 1983 and his mother worked as a high school teacher.
He graduated from Tennessee State University and applied to the University of Alabama School of Medicine, but was rejected.
In 1980, he and Vivien Thomas were the first to successfully implant an automatic defibrillator in a human patient. Watkins was the valedictorian of his class at Alabama State Laboratory High School. Instead, he attended the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and became the first African American to obtain a medical degree from that institution.
By the time he graduated in 1970, Watkins was still the only black student at the school.
Watkins began his medical residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1971. He left in 1973 for Harvard University where he researched the use of angiotensin blockers in cases of congestive heart failure.
Watkins returned to Johns Hopkins two years later, and joined the admissions department in 1979. He was named a professor of cardiac surgery in 1991, and concurrently held the post of associate dean of the School of Medicine until his retirement in 2013.
Watkins died in Baltimore on April 11, 2015, at the age of 70, due to a heart attack and subsequent stroke.
Vanderbilt University established the Levi Watkins Junior., Doctor of Medicine Chair in his honor on April 30. He had inaugurated a lecture series also named after him in 2002.
He was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Kappa Mu, and Beta Kappa Chirurgical
