Cummings, Elijah, 1951-2019

Elijah Eugene Cummings (January 18, 1951 – October 17, 2019) was an American politician and civil rights advocate who served in the United States House of Representatives for Maryland's 7th congressional district from 1996 until his death in 2019, which he was succeeded by his predecessor Kweisi Mfume. A member of the Democratic Party, Cummings previously served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1983 to 1996.

Cummings was born on January 18, 1951, in Baltimore. After graduasting with honors from the Baltimore City College high school in 1969, Cummings then attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. where he served in the student government as sophomore class president, student government treasurer and later student government president. He became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor's degree in Political Science. Cummings graduated from law school at the University of Maryland School of Law, receiving his Juris Doctor in 1976, and was admitted to the bar in Maryland later that year. He practiced law for 19 years before first being elected to the House in the 1996 elections.

For 14 years, Cummings served in the Maryland House of Delegates. In the Maryland General Assembly, he served as Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and was the first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tempore, the second highest position in the House of Delegates.

The five-term Congressman for Maryland's 7th congressional district, Kweisi Mfume, resigned in February 1996 to take the presidency of the NAACP. Cummings won a crowded twenty-seven-way Democratic primary—the real contest in this heavily Democratic, black-majority district—with 37.5% of the vote. In the special election, he defeated Republican Kenneth Kondner with over 80 percent of the vote. He defeated Kondner again in November by a similar margin to win the seat in his own right. He was reelected 11 more times in the contests which followed, never dropping below 69 percent of the vote. He ran unopposed in 2006.

Cummings died on October 17, 2019, at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the age of 68. Before his funeral service on October 25 at Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church, where he was a member for 40 years, Cummings lay in state at the U.S. Capitol Building's Statuary Hall on October 24. Cummings was the first African American lawmaker to achieve the honor of lying in state at the nation's Capitol.