ENCOMIUM FOR CUMMINGS

“Encomium: Bison brother Elijah Cummings” Yesterday, I was reading in Baltimore, Marylander, Frederick Douglass’ third autobiography, LIFE AND TIMES (1881, 1994). Today, October 17, 2019, I learn of the death of Hon. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, Maryland, esteemed U. S. Congressman, my former ‘73 classmate, friend and Bison brother at our beloved Howard University. Baltimore has produced great men. Maryland has produced great men and women; Harriet Tubman and Francis Ellen Watkins Harper among them. Frederick Douglass’ chapter in “Weighed in the Balance “ decried the exodus movement of the 1879’s-1880, as “a medicine, not food; it is for disease not health; it is not to be taken from choice but necessity. In anything like a normal condition of things the South is the best place for the Negro. Nowhere else is there for him a promise of a happier future....While however it may be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures of coercion to keep them there...If it is attempted by force or fraud to compel the colored people to stay there, they should by all means go—go quickly and die, if need be, in the attempt .” P.872-873 Congressman Cummings stayed in the South, in his beloved Baltimore. For college he ventured to Howard University in Washington, D.C. There he assisted me in attaining the honor of becoming the Editor-in-Chief of THE HILLTOP; our weekly newspaper that was founded by Zora Neal Hurston in 1924, when she matriculated there. Elijah Cummings and others of us, all of whom later became attorneys, in various states, launched “Black Love Productions,” in 1973, a social club of male achievers, who did not pledge any of Howard’s fraternities. Harriet Tubman was the “Moses” of our people in many ways, leading hundreds —maybe thousands if we include her Civil War, South Carolina, riverboat exploits—of slaves to freedom from slavery and never losing one . She had fainting spells that lasted hours, from her having been hit in the head with a metal object by a slave master. Yet “the Lord made a way, somehow !” The last Marylander mentioned here is one of my favorite poets and freedom-fighters, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper. She was born free. She is lesser known than Tubman and Douglass, but having helped to found the Underground Railroad with William Still in Philadelphia and coming from an African Methodist Episcopal Church Church and School, before ending as Unitarian, her rich life has been no less effective. While I enjoyed her novel, “Iola Leroy,” her unforgettable poem about a slave mother learning her ABC’s so she could read her Bible, is what electrified me. A female church van driver in Alton, Illinois at St. John Missionary Baptist church, then-pastored by my baby brother, Rev. Edwin M. Coleman, recited Harper poem, extemporaneously after I spoke to a young people’s conference. It goes: “Learning to Read BY FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER Very soon the Yankee teachers Came down and set up school; But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,— It was agin’ their rule. Our masters always tried to hide Book learning from our eyes; Knowledge did’nt agree with slavery— ’Twould make us all too wise. But some of us would try to steal A little from the book. And put the words together, And learn by hook or crook. I remember Uncle Caldwell, Who took pot liquor fat And greased the pages of his book, And hid it in his hat. And had his master ever seen The leaves upon his head, He’d have thought them greasy papers, But nothing to be read. And there was Mr. Turner’s Ben, Who heard the children spell, And picked the words right up by heart, And learned to read ’em well. Well, the Northern folks kept sending The Yankee teachers down; And they stood right up and helped us, Though Rebs did sneer and frown. And I longed to read my Bible, For precious words it said; But when I begun to learn it, Folks just shook their heads, And said there is no use trying, Oh! Chloe, you’re too late; But as I was rising sixty, I had no time to wait. So I got a pair of glasses, And straight to work I went, And never stopped till I could read The hymns and Testament. Then I got a little cabin A place to call my own— And I felt independent As the queen upon her throne.”