Early on October 17th, Representative Elijah Cummings’ office announced that he had died due to “complications concerning long-term health challenges” in Maryland’s Johns Hopkins Hospital. Following the announcement, Cummings’ colleagues in the House of Representatives came forward to share their sorrows about his passing and share their own experiences with him.
“In the House, Elijah was our North Star,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “He was a leader of towering character and integrity, whose stirring voice and steadfast values pushed the Congress and country to rise always to a higher purpose.” Pelosi and Cummings were both Baltimore natives, with her fondly referring to him as her “Baltimore brother,” with him earning her trust and confidence to serve unofficially as one of her right-hand men on Capitol Hill during the Trump administration. Known for his people skills, Pelosi was able to entrust Cummings with all of the most sensitive and pressing battles, including the new impeachment inquiry.
Pelosi was not alone in her emotions today, with the NAACP calling Cummings a “resounding civil rights icon that prevailed in the face of adversity against all odds,” and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stating in a private caucus meeting that “In a time of confrontation and disagreement and anger and, yes, sometimes hate, he was a beacon of civility, of fairness, of justice,”
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A staunch civil rights activist and fervent protector of all vulnerable groups, regardless of their religion, ideology or socioeconomic status, Elijah Cummings has served in the House of Representatives since 1996. Since then he was able to ascend through the ranks, earning chairmanships on influential committees — most notably being the House Oversight Committee — and becoming one of the highest-ranked African-Americans in congress.
Cummings was born in 1951 in Baltimore to two sharecroppers, Ruth Elma and Robert Cummings. He graduated with honors from Baltimore City College high school in 1969 and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Howard University in Washington D.C. Cummings did not stop there, next earning his Juris Doctorate from the University of Maryland School of Law and practiced law for 19 years before he moved on to hold office in the House of Representatives in 1996.
Before coming to Capitol Hill, Cummings served in the Maryland House of Delegates for 14 years and later the Maryland General Assembly, where he served as the Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and became the first African-American to serve as Speaker Pro Tempore.
Via the Washington Times
In 1996, Maryland’s 7th District Representative, Kweisi Mfume, resigned in order to take over as NAACP President, leaving the seat up for grabs in a special election. Cummings was able to win the seven-way primary and captured over 80 of the vote in the general election. He was able to beat the same republican challenger later that year to retain his seat with a similar margin, allowing him to prove once and for all that he had earned his place in Washington. Following this, he was able to win reelection another 11 times and never secured less than 69% of the vote.
In the House, Cummings has held positions on the previously mentioned Committee on Oversight and Reform, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and as the ranking minority member on the Select Committee on Benghazi from the 114th Congress. While in office, he successfully championed several landmark pieces of legislation into law, such as the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. This was signed by President Barack Obama and co-sponsored by California Republican, Representative Darrell Issa, as an expansion of the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act in order to modernize the definition of Federal Record to incorporate electronic documents.
For the entirety of his career, Cummings has been an outspoken advocate for voting rights, stating in a 2019 Congressional hearing on the For the People Act (an anti-corruption measure including voting reforms) that “voting is crucial,” he continued. “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.” Harkening back to his family’s experiences having difficulties voting, he often took the opportunity to remind us both how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. On my mother’s dying bed, 92 years old,” Cummings stated during the same hearing, “her last words were, ‘Do not let them take our votes away from us.”
Via Patch
In the 2012 Supreme Court’s majority decision in Shelby County v. Holder, they struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of discriminatory voting practices to have changes to their election laws approved by the Federal Government. The Court’s opinion states that imposes current burdens that are no longer responsive to the current conditions in the voting districts in question. Although the constraints this section places on specific states made sense in the 1960s and 1970s, they do not any longer and now represent an unconstitutional violation of the power. However, Cummings (and many others) felt very differently, stating that it “significantly slows the march of progress we’ve made since the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965.”
Cummings work never stopped. He took on states like Texas and Georgia who were known for African-American voter suppression and oppression — right up into the 2018 Midterms. Earlier this year, his committees were directed to launch investigations into reports of difficulties being able to cast votes, be it with absurdly low numbers of voting machines in polling places with high minority populations or with absentee ballots being sent too late to be counted, in 2018.
Related: Voter Suppression was Alive and Well in the 2018 Midterms
With Elijah Cummings’ tragic passing, millions of Americans have lost their greatest champion. However, his legacy and his passion has left a mark on Capitol Hill that will stand the test of time.