CLEVELANDURBNNEWS.COM-BALTIMORE, Maryland- Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat and the first African-American to lie in state at the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., was laid to rest on Thursday, his funeral drawing the attendance of the heart of Baltimore's Black community, and an array of congress members and the political elite, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former vice president Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, all of them Democrats like Cummings.

Among the powerful Republicans there was Senate Majority Leader MItch McConnell of Kentucky.

Several 100 people, including constituent of Cummings congressional district and other members waited outside the church where the federal lawmaker worshipped for decades, before the doors opened at New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, his funeral  drawing thousands of mourners.

Speaker Pelosi, Obama and the Clintons were among the speakers, Bill Clinton and Obama eulogizing him.

"His life validates the things we tell ourselves about what's possible in this country," said Obama, the nation's first Black president and a former junior U.S. senator from Illinois.

Bill Clinton, who, like Obama, was president when Cummings served in Congress, said voters in Baltimore and from Cummings' largely Black  congressional district sent a warrior to Congress to fight for public policy changes for the betterment of Americans and the most vulnerable, Baltimore a majority Black impoverished city.

"You did a good thing," said Bill Clinton a Rhodes Scolar. "Thanks for sending him."

Speaker Pelosi, who served alongside of Cummings his entire time in Congress, told the audience that Cummings was a Civil Rights  icon who "always made room at the table for others."

A sharecropper's son who rose from humble beginnings to become a respected and seasoned member of the U.S. House of Representatives, died last week at the age of 68, and amid a political fallout with President Trump.

President Trump skipped both the funeral and the capital memorial service.

Cummings' death comes as the 2020 election nears and Trump faces an impeachment inquiry in the House, impeachment proceedings motivated by his quid pro quo demand for Ukraine leaders to dig up dirt on Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and relative to an associated complaint from a whistleblower regarding the foreign relations fiasco.

A former member of the Maryland House of Representatives and a Black federal lawmaker and member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996 who led Maryland's largely Black 7th congressional district until his death on Oct 17 at John Hopkins Hospital, and who  was passionate in particular about his  hometown city of Baltimore, Cummings had served as the chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform since January 2019 at the appointment of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He had been sick with health problems for a while, sources said.

He was so well respected nationwide that  he received 12 honorary doctoral degrees from universities across the United States, most recently an honorary doctorate of public service from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2017

He was also a Civil Rights activist who, as a lawmaker, introduced bills in Congress such as the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014, a bipartisan bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2014, and the All Circuit Review Extension Act, a bill that would extend for three years the authority for federal employees who appeal a judgment of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to file their appeal at any U.S. circuit court of appeals, instead of only the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit

The lawmaker supported the Smart Savings Act, a bill that would make the default investment in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) an age-appropriate target date asset allocation investment fund (L Fund) instead of the Government Securities Investment Fund (G Fund)

Speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Cummings said "our party does not just believe, but understands, that Black Lives Matter. But we also recognize that our community and our law enforcement work best when they work together.

Though Cummings was one of the few Black Democrats who attended the president's inauguration in January of 2017, the two were repeatedly at odds since that time, the conflict intensifying after the Dems won back control of the House during the November 2018 midterm elections.

But it was in his role as chairman of the powerful Committee on Oversight and Reform, one of the committee's leading the impeachment inquiry, that drew the wrath of President Trump earlier this year, Trump a billionaire media personality and real estate mogul who succeeded Obama into office in 2017.

The conflict grew even further as Cummings tightened oversight of the president, including  berating a Homeland Security official at a Congressional hearing on its administrative policy of separating migrant families at the southern border.

And after the congressman began probing Trump's reporting of his finances and potential conflicts of interest, the president's disdain for Cummings escalated, Trump publicly tweeting that the respected Black member of Congress was a "racist," and a "brutal bully."

The petty president then heightened the controversy by saying Baltimore is no place where anybody would want to live, a slap in the face at Black people, his critics say.