His parents were Southern sharecroppers who moved to Baltimore for a better life. The budding civil rights movement was active in the city, and schools and public facilities became integrated when he was a boy. They were excellent, and he went on to become student body president at Howard University, earned a law degree and now serves as a Democrat in the House, representing the city in which he grew up.
He recently took his 86-year-old mother, Ruth Cummings, to meet his close friend, Barack Obama. A Pentecostal preacher, she told the president, "I want you to know, son, I pray for you every day."
"She called him 'son'!" Cummings recalled with a laugh. "I said, 'Mom, he's the president.' She told me it was the best day of her life. It blew her mind to meet a black president."
