Elijah Cummings at Age 11 had Rare Courage

11-year-old Elijah Cummings and 31 companions went swimming in a Baltimore-owned swimming pool in a city that had integrated all city-owned swimming pools, which he has every right to swim in. According to the 1962 Baltimore Sun accounts of the incident, the crowd of angry whites grew to 500 in number but children were able to swim, thanks to the protection of about 70 Baltimore City policemen assisted by K-9 dogs.  Yet the police were unable or failed to protect the children from the rocks and bottles the whites, screaming the N word and “go back where you came from,”  threw at the black children.  One of them hit Elijah in his forehead; he bears the scar on his eyebrow to this day.  Civil-rights leader Juanita  Mitchell,  who herself had been hit and was bleeding from a rock or bottle thrown by one of the mob, put her arms around the young boy to protect him from further injury.