According to Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for Mr. Rubio, the confusion with the photo of Mr. Rubio and Mr. Cummings occurred due to a mislabeled photo. The original photo, taken in February 2014 by Philadelphia investigator Lauren Schneiderman’s photojournalist, was removed from Ms. Schneiderman’s personal website.
The screenshots show that the caption information identified Mr. Cummings as Mr. Lewis.
“Senator Sullivan’s staff made a mistake in trying to honor an American legend,” Mike Anderson, a spokesman for Mr. Sullivan, said in an email Saturday.
Twitter quickly criticized Mr. Rubio for confusing congressmen.
Lewis died in his 80s on Friday. He announced in December that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. One of the original 13 Freedom Riders, he was a powerful force in the United States civil rights movement, which helped organize the March on Washington and other protests.
Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, died on October 17 at age 68 in Baltimore. At the time of his death, he was serving his thirteenth term in the House of Representatives.
Amid the nationwide riots that resulted from the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in May after an encounter with Minneapolis police, the treatment of American blacks has been brought to the forefront of political consciousness from the country. Black employees, for example, have been the subject of indignities, such as being mistaken for a black coworker.
Despite all its prestige, Capitol Hill remains just another workplace, and senatorial positions were far from the first cases in which Mr. Cummings and Mr. Lewis had mistaken each other.
In late December, CBS News apologized for incorrectly displaying a photo of Mr. Cummings when referring to Mr. Lewis. In June 2019, a Fox News presenter, Eric Shawn, apologized for confusing congressmen, including with Mr. Lewis’s badge in the news clip.
