DNC Chair Tom Perez called powerhouse U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) – who died Thursday, October 17 at age 68 – “the conscience of Congress” who was guided by “helping people, especially those in the shadows.” That telling image of people “in the shadows” evoked the incantatory words that Cummings spoke, over and over, at the funeral of Freddie Gray, a victim of Baltimore police violence, at a time when the hardest streets of Baltimore were floodlit by media cameras. “As I’ve thought about the cameras,” Cummings said, “I wondered: Did anybody recognize Freddie when he was alive. Did you see him? Did you see him? Did you see him?”
It was an unbelievably poignant reminder of the invisibility of the people “in the shadows,” including the countless black people – so many of them, like Freddie Gray or Michael Brown, young black men – who only come to light in the aftermath of violence committed against them. Cummings marched thick in the throng of everyday people who mourned Freddie Gray on the streets of Baltimore and demanded justice for his senseless death.
Michael Brown was killed when he was 18, Freddie Gray when he was 25. Even Cummings’ life span of 68 years was comparatively brief compared to the national norms of today, though not much less than the average life expectancy for non-Hispanic black males (71.5), which is five years briefer than the average life expectancy for whites in the U.S. In Baltimore as in St. Louis, Cummings’ “people in the shadows” experience the most concentrated poverty and gun violence, the greatest barriers to adequate health and education, and live the shortest lives.
Cummings fought for his people low on the streets and high in the Congress. He had represented Maryland’s 7th Congressional District since 1996, serving 12 terms in the House. At the time of his death, he was at the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump as House Oversight Committee chairman. “As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, he showed us all not only the importance of checks and balances within our democracy, but also the necessity of good people stewarding it,” President Barack Obama said.
Cummings came up from the grass roots, “a child of southern sharecroppers who headed north as part of the Great Migrations,” as Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, wrote in a moving tribute. Morial fittingly said that Cummings’ life “represented the African-American dream.” Morial cited a stunning list of civil rights legislation that Cummings introduced in the last year of his life alone: a proposal to facilitate partnerships between the Small Business Administration and HBCUs, his Promoting Reentry through Education in Prisons Act that would provide incarcerated individuals with educational opportunities, and the SAFE Lending Act that would crack down on the abuses of the payday lending industry.
And then, there was this, Cummings’ impassioned plea on the House floor against voter suppression on February 6: “On my mother’s dying bed – 92 years old, former sharecropper – her last words were, ‘Do not let them take our votes away from us. She had fought and seen people harmed, beaten, trying to vote. Talk about inalienable rights. Voting is crucial. And I don’t give a damn how you look at it: There are efforts to stop people from voting. That’s not right. This is not Russia. This is the United States of America.”
This great man is mourned first and foremost by his wife, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, who also chairs the Maryland Democratic Party. “He worked until his last breath because he believed our democracy was the highest and best expression of our collective humanity and that our nation’s diversity was our promise, not our problem,” Cummings’ widow said.
U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri) also lost a dear friend and staunch colleague. “I have lost a brother and America has lost a true hero,” Clay mourned on Twitter. Cummings left us with a challenge, best stated by President Obama: “May his example inspire more Americans to pick up the baton and carry it forward in a manner worthy of his service.”
