The late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall on Thursday.
The longtime Maryland lawmaker and chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee, who died last week, will be honored in a memorial service for members of Congress, his family and special guests. There will be a viewing for the public after the service.
{mosads}Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) are among the lawmakers expected to be in attendance for the ceremony.
Members of congressional leadership will also lay a wreath during the ceremony. The choir from Baltimore’s Morgan State University, where Cummings served as a member of the board of regents, will also perform.
Cummings will be buried Friday in his hometown of Baltimore, a city that he represented during his 23 years in Congress. Funeral services will be at the New Psalmist Baptist Church, where he worshipped for decades in Baltimore. Dozens of lawmakers from both parties are expected to attend the funeral.
“In the House, Elijah was our North Star. He was a leader of towering character and integrity, who pushed the Congress and country always to rise to a higher purpose, reminding us why we are here,” Pelosi wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post last Friday.
“As he said whenever he saw that we were not living up to our Founders’ vision for America and meeting the needs of our children for the future: ‘We are better than this.’ ”