Author Archives: Congressman Elijah Cummings

By Elijah Cummings On April 4, America will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the darkest hours in our national history. We will pause to recall that heartbreaking moment in Memphis, Tennessee, when an assassin’s bullet cut short the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There will be those whose vision of those […]

By Elijah Cummings   This year, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King amid a nationwide discussion about the work that remains to be done. Five decades after Selma and passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, many current challenges mirror those Dr. King confronted – economic inequality, disparities throughout the criminal justice […]

By Elijah Cummings This month, as we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we also should be asking ourselves this question: “What message does Dr. King’s legacy have for the leaders of our time?” I suspect that he would be talking about the economy — and here is why. Nearly 50 years […]

Originally Published December 5, 2007 By Congressman Elijah Cummings December 1st was World AIDS Day – a time each year when committed people around the globe join to raise public awareness about this often deadly disease. Our message was clear. Only an expanding, world-wide movement can defeat the most devastating pandemic of our time. In Johannesburg, South […]

Originally Published February 22, 2010 By Congressman Elijah Cummings Those who wonder how best to sustain the coalition for positive change that elected Barack Obama could gain by considering the life of a good man who helped to forge President Obama’s victory – Rev. Dr. John L. Wright of the First Baptist Church of Guilford. Although he experienced […]

Originally Posted December 5, 2011 By Congressman Elijah Cummings It was only when my nephew, Christopher Cummings, an honor student at Old Dominion University, was killed in a home invasion and double shooting last June that I began to fully understand the relentless pain that the families of crime victims experience. Christopher was a wonderful […]

By Congressman Elijah Cummings Even as Washington remains captivated by the deeply troubling actions of the President of the United States, we must never forget the plea of a wonderful neighbor whom I met last year at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Tears in her eyes, “Mrs. Johnson” confided to me that the doctors had saved her […]

By Congressman Elijah Cummings When necessary social change occurs, it is our young, more often than not, who are in the lead. So it was during the civil rights movement of the last century – and so it remains in the struggles for racial justice and reasonable gun safety, economic empowerment and environmental survival today. […]

By Congressman Elijah Cummings On our national Labor Day just passed, I paused to recall how, for my family, like so many others, our struggles for civil rights and economic rights have always been intertwined.   We must remember and never hesitate to speak this truth.  Labor Day must be about more than the momentary pleasures […]

By Congressman Elijah Cummings I was hungry; You gave me something to eat Here in Maryland, one of America’s wealthiest States, one in every eight households faces a constant struggle against hunger; more than one in every five households with children struggle to obtain enough food to provide regular, healthy meals for their family; and […]

By Congressman Elijah Cummings People in El Paso go shopping on a weekend and become the victims of yet another mass shooting. Others go out for a pleasant evening in Dayton, and lose their lives bleeding on the ground. Caught in a torrent of hate-filled political rhetoric and deadly weapons, Americans are more than  justified […]

By Congressman Elijah Cummings The Thing I Love About Baltimore Recently, the AFRO American newspaper decided to celebrate the anniversary of its first 1892 publication in a way that is unusual for a news medium that, all too often, reports events and decisions in our lives that are difficult, dangerous and shocking. In contrast, the AFRO […]