Elijah Cummings

When rioting began in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, U.S. Congressman Elijah Cummings rushed to his beloved city from his office in the U.S. Capitol building, grabbed his bullhorn and took to the streets.

As flames from burning buildings only blocks from his row home lit the sky and the din from angry protestors came from all directions, Cummings walked arm-in-arm with a handful of neighbors, friends and strangers to the heart of the disturbance, gallantly singing “This Little Light of Mine.”

Although his actions didn’t quell the unrest, many of the rioters stopped and joined the lawmaker in song. His actions, he later said, were the least he could do for his hometown.

But what surprised Cummings most during the riots was the number of teenagers and young adults who unabashedly were involved in unlawful behavior.

Living messages we send

“I’ve often said, our children are the living messages we send to a future we will never see,” he said. “But now our children are sending us to a future they will never see. There’s something wrong with that picture.”

Cummings was the son of parents whose descendants were sharecroppers in South Carolina. His father worked at a chemical factory, while his mother worked at a pickle factory and later as a maid.

Cummings wanted to become an attorney at young age for two reasons: his fascination with Perry Mason, the fictional seldom-to-lose lawyer from the 1950s to 1960s television series, and his desire to help the underserved.

“Every day, I wake up with one goal: to make sure our children and generations yet unborn will reach their God-given potential,” he said, “and that the future we are creating is a brighter one for every child.”

Cummings graduated from Howard University in 1973 and received his law degree from the University of Maryland in 1976. He practiced law and served in the Maryland House of Delegates before being elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1996.

While in the Maryland House of Delegates, Cummings served as Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and was the state’s first African American to be named Speaker Pro Tempore, the second highest position in the House of Delegates.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, Cummings served on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and later chaired the committee from January 2019 until his death that same year. As chair of the Oversight Committee, Cummings was a leading figure in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

As the president repeatedly tried to block and delay the investigation, Cummings said: “The President is acting as if he is above the law. What else is he hiding from the American people?”

Throughout his career, Cummings was never hesitant to question what he felt was wrong or could be improved – even in his hometown.

“In the city of Baltimore, there are over a thousand monuments, and not one monument is erected to memorialize a critic,” he said in a speech. “Every one of the monuments is erected to memorialize one who was severely criticized.”

Cummings died in Baltimore in 2019. He was 68.

Upon his death, he was the first African American lawmaker to lay in state in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building. Thousands of mourners passed his casket to pay their respects. His funeral was attended by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well dozens of his congressional colleagues.

As for the bullhorn he wielded during the Baltimore riots, he kept it in his office in the U.S. Capitol, emblazoned with a gold tag that reads: “The gentleman will not yield.”