John Cumming was first a printer, then a teacher of printing. Lastly, he helped to found and was the first director of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University. He and Dr. Norman Clarke would spend days and days poring over unique and interesting finds of Michigan history. They were avid hunters of ephemera.
Among his other interests, Cumming was a student of lynchings in Michigan–there were six, he claimed (others say there were more)–and was the author of The Lynching at Corunna. Cumming said at least half of the lynching victims in Michigan were Irish, but there were two–one in Mason and one in Port Huron–of young black men.
Here is the transcript of our interview with the John Cumming.