Righteous man believed in better US, Baltimore
“We are better than this.” Elijah Cummings said that over and over again, urging his fellow Americans and his fellow Baltimoreans to believe it — and to be it.
The U.S. congressman from Maryland, who died early Thursday morning at 68, was a long-time warrior for justice, truly a great man. He spoke truth to power even as a member of the power class. And the Democrat was not above pleading, with rival Republicans or constituents, for what he knew was right.
He chose politics and public life because he wanted a better country, a better city. Immersed in the complex problems of both, he kept his eyes on the prize all through his career. As a member of Congress, with oversight of government operations at a range of levels, Cummings was in the role of examiner, and what he examined was usually bad — from incompetence by bureaucrats to price gouging by corporations to the abuses of power of the executive branch. And so his words
Baltimore barber. He mentioned Cummings in the same breath as such legendary civil rights figures as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Hubbard, 45, expected the congressman’s legacy to be the talk of his barbershop Thursday.
“He stood up, put himself out there so we could get a better life,” Hubbard said. “A street or something should be named after him.”
Allistaire Blackwell sat on a Maryland Transit Administration bus reminiscing about the blunt-talking Democrat who “looked after the city of Baltimore.”
“He told the truth,” the 65-year-old West Baltimore man said. “He told it like it was. He didn’t hold back. He was a real decent person.”
Thelma Johnson, 84, of Edmondson Village said the city has lost a great leader.
“He was for everybody,” she said. “He was present for all people.”
For Ghee, 52, of West Baltimore, what he remembers is the indelible image of Cummings standing at North and Pennsylvania avenues with a bullhorn, encouraging people to go home and avoid further confrontations with police during the unrest after the death of Freddie Gray. Cummings had spoken at the funeral of Gray, the 25-yearold whose death from injuries suffered in police custody sparked protests and later rioting and looting.
“He was up on North Avenue, in person, trying to calm down that situation,” Ghee said. “He was a leader.”
Ghee noted that Cummings defended Baltimore after President Donald Trump called his district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” despite the congressman’s recent heath issues.
“He still spoke on that,” he said.
Ricks, 68, was completing Coppin State University coursework while in jail for a drug-related charge more than two decades ago, when Cummings visited the inmates and encouraged their charity work and other positive efforts, he said.
Ricks said he learned all he needed to know about Cummings “on that basis alone.”
“He always seemed to be sincere, doing right by the people,” Ricks said. “He would motivate us to keep doing what we were doing, what was right.”
Henderson, 45, still knows the address of Cummings’ Park Avenue district office, where the congressman would meet with constituents for any reason — sometimes even “for no reason,” he said.
“People could go to his office,” Henderson said. “They would talk, and he would listen.”
The news of Cummings’ death left him “hurting,” Henderson said.
“He did a lot for the city,” he said. “He tried to make things right in government for the people of Baltimore.”
Former Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, a friend and neighbor of Cummings in West Baltimore’s Druid Heights neighborhood, considered him a Baltimorean first and foremost.
“He was raised … in South Baltimore, not too far from us,” Hamm said. “He went to City College, not too far from us. And he came back and lived in the neighborhood, not too far from us. He was a part of all of this thing called Baltimore.”