Rep. Elijah Cummings

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings passes

Contributed By:The 411 News

After serving twenty-four years in the U.S. House of Representatives from Baltimore, MD and 14 years in the Maryland legislature, news came Thursday morning that Rep. Elijah Cummings had died.

Rep. Cummings chaired the House committee on impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump and was a target of intense criticism from the president.

President Trump called the Democrat’s district a “rodent-infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” The comments came weeks after Trump drew bipartisan condemnation following his calls for Democratic congresswomen of color to go back to their “broken and crime-infested countries.”

“Those in the highest levels of the government must stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior,” Cummings replied.

Cummings missed two roll call votes Thursday, the first day back following a two-week House recess. He hadn't returned to work after having a medical procedure that he said would only keep him away for about a week. He previously released a statement saying he'd be back by the time the session resumed. He hadn't taken part in a roll call vote since September 11.

Cummings was born January 18, 1951 as 1 of seven children whose parents were sharecroppers who had migrated from South Carolina to Baltimore in the 1940s.

Atty. Larry Gibson, a Baltimore attorney and professor at the University of Maryland School of Law told National Public Radio he met then 17-year-old Cummings, in 1968, during a ceremony at the high school Cummings attended. It was the same high school that Gibson had attended. “I was a young lawyer then. Cummings was the class president. Blacks were still a minority in that school. I had attended Howard University. He graduated, and then he went to Howard University. And then he was elected to precisely the same position which I'd held, which is the student council president.”

They became lifelong friends.

Cummings was a fierce champion for civil rights even from a young age. At 11, he desegregated a Baltimore city pool with a group of friends. An angry mob threw bottles and stones at them, and that mob's violence scarred Cummings' face.

Gibson said both of Cummings parents were Pentecostal ministers. “Elijah's mother and my mother were friends. They were church buddies - so completely independent of any contact between us.”

Story Posted:10/18/2019