CBS News Apologizes After Mixing Up Late Rep. Elijah Cummings And Congressman John Lewis During Evening Broadcast

Civil Rights legend Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) announced on Monday that he's been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Well-wishes and news reports regarding the diagnosis went out around the world, but one in particular on CBS Evening News stood out for all the wrong reasons.

The network displayed a quote from Congressman Lewis regarding his determination to fight the disease.

The problem?

They displayed the quote from Lewis next to a photo of the late Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD).

House Oversight Committee Chairman Cummings, another widely-admired titan in Congress, passed away in October of 2019.

CBS soon apologized for the error.

While the two may bear some resemblance to each other, they're far from identical.

People pointed out that it takes, at most, a second glance to distinguish the two.

Sadly, this isn't the first time the two have been confused on air.

Fox News played a clip of Lewis instead of Cummings from Face the Nation.

This was despite Lewis' congressional placard being clearly visible.

When Cummings died in October, Lewis' name began trending.

In the '60s, Lewis was a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and crucial in organizing Freedom Summer, which saw a wave of young civil rights activists travel to Jim Crow era Mississippi in an effort to register disenfranchised Black voters.

He was an organizer of the historic March on Washington.

Lewis was also present for some of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights movement, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream Speech (at the same march he'd organized) and the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where his skull was fractured by a police officer's nightstick.

Lewis' graphic novel March trilogy set in slipcase is available here.

"Discover the inside story of the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of one of its most iconic figures, Congressman John Lewis."

"March is the award-winning, #1 bestselling graphic novel trilogy recounting his life in the movement, co-written with Andrew Aydin and drawn by Nate Powell. This commemorative set contains all three volumes of March in a beautiful slipcase."