Professor Robert C. Smith Remembers Congressman Elijah Cummings

NBC NEWS -- Elijah Cummings, the 12-term Maryland congressman who died on Thursday, is being remembered as an eloquent and militant voice for democracy.

“He approached his work with a kind of joyousness,” said Robert C. Smith, an emeritus professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University who remembers meeting Cummings in the 1990s. “He was able to express his militant commitment to liberal progressive causes, but he always did it in a moderate way.”