After undergoing an unspecified medical procedure, the democratic leader did not return to his office this week, the Baltimore Sun reported. In a statement, his office said he died due to complications related to long-standing health problems. Mr. Cummings was Chairman of the House oversight and reform Committee and a leading figure in the investigation into trump’s impeachment.

The giant of integrity and knowledge has fallen: Congress reacts to the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings

Born into a family of southern sharecroppers and Baptist preachers, Mr. Cummings grew up in racially divided Baltimore of the 1950s and 1960s. At 11, he helped integrate a local swimming pool when he was attacked with bottles and rocks. Perry Mason, a popular series about a fictional lawyer, inspired him to enter the legal profession.

A lot of young people in my neighborhood were going to reform the school, he told the East Texas Review. While I don’t quite know what school reform is, I knew Perry Mason won a lot of cases. I also thought that these young people are likely to need lawyers.

In the Maryland house of delegates, he became the youngest Chairman of the Legislative Black Council and the first African American to serve as speaker, a member who presides in the absence of speakers.

In 1996, he won a seat in the U.S. House of representatives that Kweisi Mfume (D) vacated to become President of the NAACP. Mr. Cummings eventually served as Chairman of the congressional Black Caucus and as ranking Democrat and then Chairman of what became the house oversight and reform Committee.

He gained national attention as Secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s chief defender during a 2015 congressional hearing over her attack on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The attack killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

He was the quintessential speak-truth to power representative, said Herbert C. Smith, a political science Professor at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. Cummings has never shied away from a very strong give and take.

Have you seen it? Have you seen it? Mr. Cummings asked in his boom baritone. The Church erupted in applause, and civil rights activist Jesse L. Jackson sat, delighted, behind him. Have you seen it?

Ive often said, our children are living messages that we send to the future we will never see, he said, his voice rising. But now our children are sending us into the future, the future they will never see! There’s something wrong with this picture!

When the looting began, hours after the funeral, Mr. Cummings rushed, bull in hand, into the restive West Baltimore neighborhood where he was working to restore order and reassure residents that authorities were taking the case seriously. (Six officers will be charged in grace’s death, though prosecutors have been unable to secure a conviction against any of them.)

Amid the turmoil, he and a dozen other residents walked, hand in hand, through the streets, singing this little light of mine.

Mr. Cummings was known for showing the same commitment in the House of representatives. The bull’s horn he possessed in West Baltimore was adorned with a gold label that read, a gentleman would not give. It was a gift from his fellow Democrats, bestowed after Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) silenced Mr. Cummings ‘ microphone at a 2014 hearing into complaints that the IRS unfairly targeted conservative nonprofit groups.

The following year, while serving on The house Select Committee on Benghazi, he sparred with Chairman Trey gowdy (R-S. C.) during a hearing Republicans gathered to examine the Clintons ‘ role in the Benghazi fiasco.

When gowdy questioned Clinton about Libya-Related emails sent from a longtime confidant of hers, Sidney Blumenthal, Mr. Cummings chimed in: Gentleman, out! Gentleman, to give! You made some inaccurate statements.

In a conversation with reporters in the hallway later, Mr. Cummings said his primary goal is not to defend Clinton, but to seek the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Let the world see it, he said.

The experience does not appear to sour gowdy on Mr Cummings.

The first two years of the trump administration, 2017 and 2018, have been excruciating for Mr. Cummings, who has struggled with poor health, including complications of heart surgery, as well as political frustration.

Mr. Cummings said his efforts to work with trump and members of the GOP majority in the House of representatives were inconclusive. He said that at the dinner after trump’s inauguration and during other meetings, he urged the President to pursue policies that could unite the country and burn his legacy. The Congressman noted that after several promising meetings, he stopped hearing from trump.

Perhaps if I had known then what I know now, I would not have had much hope, Mr. Cummings later observed. He is a man who quite often calls the truth a lie and calls the truth a lie.

As ranking Democrats on the oversight Committee, Mr. Cummings became a leading voice against the trump administration’s effort to add the citizenship question to the 2020 census, a change that critics argued would discourage the participation of documented and undocumented immigrants.

He was also a vocal opponent of immigration policies that separated thousands of children from their parents after they illegally crossed the southern U.S. border. He characterized the trump White house as an inhumane use of child internment camps.

After Democrats gained control of the House in the November 2018 midterm elections, Mr. Cummings was appointed Chairman of the oversight Committee, which he used to sound additional alarms. He led an investigation into admissions issued by the White house over objections by career officials and payments made during the 2016 campaign to silence women who claimed to have had ties to trump.

Mr. Cummings was a combative leader, but he was adept at calming volatile situations, such as the sharp exchange between Rep. mark meadows (R-N. C.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) during a hearing in February 2019.

The oversight Committee was taking testimony from Michael Cohen, trump’s former personal attorney, and Tleib accused meadows of pulling a racist stunt by forcing a black administration employee to follow him. Meadows demanded that her words be struck off the record.

Mr. Cummings called meadows one of my best friends and prompted Tlaib to say that she does not call meadows a racist. The next day, conservative meadows and liberal freshman Tlaib embraced in public.

The interaction of people, Mr. Cummings said in the order of explanation. Human interaction, that’s all.

Elijah Eugene Cummings was born in Baltimore on January 18, 1951. His father worked in a chemical factory, his mother in pickling, and then as a maid, raising seven children. Both parents came from families with a stake in South Carolina. Although they struggled to feed their family, his parents could apples and peaches and give half of the canned goods to the needy.

The owner of the Baltimore pharmacy where Mr. Cummings worked paid for his application to Howard University, and during Mr. Cummings ‘ tenure as a Howard student regularly sent him $ 10 with a note that said, hang there.

At Howard, he served as President of the student government, and received a bachelor of political science degree in 1973. Three years later, he earned a law degree from the University of Maryland and practiced law for nearly two decades, mostly in private practice.

He also helped law students develop their oral and written skills as chief judge in the Maryland state Court, a competition in which students submit briefs and present oral arguments in a hypothetical appeals case.

In the Maryland house of delegates, where Mr. Cummings served from 1983 to 1996, he advocated a ban on alcohol and tobacco ads on city billboards in Baltimore the first ban of its kind in a major U.S. city.

On Capitol hill, Mr. Cummings was in the minority of House members and senators who voted in 2002 against authorizing a military invasion of Iraq. The administration of President George W. Bush, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, stated that Iraq continues to possess and develop weapons of mass destruction. Mr Cummings said there was insufficient evidence that such weapons would have been sent to war and thus put their lives in danger, a view that has been supported by subsequent investigations.

Also in 2002, Mr. Cummings was elected Chairman of the congressional Black Forum, a position he used to push for increased funding for public education and the Head Start program.

He was the only member of the Maryland house delegation to oppose the release of the Starr report, which contained salacious details of President bill Clinton’s affair with White house Intern Monica Lewinsky.

His first marriage, Joyce Matthews, ended in divorce after a long separation. In 2008, he married Maya, Rocamar, consultant on policy issues. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.

In the mid-1990s, he had financial difficulties. He was sued by creditors and owed $ 30,000 in Federal taxes, which he eventually paid. He told the Baltimore Sun that during his time as a Congressman, he endured two winters without heat because he could not afford to fix his stoves.

He said the money problems stem from his struggle to keep his law practice afloat while serving in Congress, as well as from helping to support his three children. I have a moral conscience that is real Central, he told the newspaper. I didn’t ask the Federal government or anyone else to do me any favors.

Mr. Cummings said he was considering running for the seat of Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who did not seek re-election in 2016 but decided he was needed in Baltimore to help the city’s riot-torn.

A member of the New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, Mr. Cummings said he was driven by his faith and confident in his conviction that history recognizes his determination to stand up for what he believed was right.

There are more than a thousand monuments in the city of Baltimore, and no monument has been erected to commemorate the critic, he once said in a speech. Each of the monuments is set in memory of a man who was severely criticized.