When Elijah Cummings sang along with Garth Brooks

This column was originally published in the Baltimore Business Journal 17 years ago (
Dec 23, 2002, edition). Cummings died on Thursday,

Cummings, from Getty Images in Politico

It takes a big man to admit he is wrong, and it takes an even bigger man to admit it in a public forum. That makes Congressman Elijah Cummings a very big man indeed.


Cummings, a Democratic congressman representing Baltimore City and Baltimore County, was recently named head of the Congressional Black Caucus. In this role he will be expected to speak up for African-Americans all across the country, especially when they may be slighted because of their race.


In a speech at a business breakfast last summer, Cummings admitted that he once was guilty of a bit of profiling 
himself. Cummings was invited with other congressmen to a reception at the White House by President Bill Clinton to hear a variety of musical acts, including Gladys Knight and the Pips and other pop music icons.



Garth Brooks, the last act

Garth Brooks, ABC News Photo

Then it came time for the last act, country singer Garth Brooks. Cummings took it as a signal to make a stealthy exit. He figured he wasn't going to hear anything he liked from a guy wearing a cowboy hat and boots. Unfortunately, it's not easy to duck out of a White House reception.

Then Brooks began to sing. As Cummings tells it, the words stole him over and moved him deeply. As he retold the story to the business audience, Cummings read the lyrics in his own rounded, prophetic tones.

"We Shall Be Free" goes like this:

This ain't comin' from no prophet
Just an ordinary man
When I close my eyes I see
The way this world shall be
When we all walk hand in hand
When the last child cries for a crust of bread
When the last man dies for just words that he said
When there's shelter over the poorest head
We shall be free
When the last thing we notice is the color of skin
And the first thing we look for is the beauty within
When the skies and the oceans are clean again
Then we shall be free

It goes on with words that any American would be proud to sing.
When Cummings finished reading, the audience was left to ponder what was said and who had said it. It got me thinking. We all do what Cummings did. We make assumptions. We judge people by how they dress, how they look, the color of their skin, who their friends are.

In business, it's a survival mechanism to size people up quickly and make judgments about their character, reliability and motives. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we do our own profiling of the people we meet and, by reflex, stereotype them. Admitting to ourselves that we do it is the first step toward overcoming it.

After the White House adventure, Cummings went to Target to get a copy of the Garth Brooks CD. Of course, the clerk could not understand why a black man would want to buy a country CD, what with stereotypes and all.

Cummings gives us all a great example. He admitted that he was too quick to judge. He gave a hearing to someone he thought represented something alien and found a common humanity. Then he embraced the other man's song and learned to sing it. Funny thing is, the other man's song turned out to be the song of himself. We could all be better by taking the time to learn another man's song.