 At the start of the civil rights movement in early 1962, and at four months old, Cashin’s mother was arrested while being involved in a sit-in protest at a lunch counter, while still holding on to Sheryll.Her father John was a dentist and was also one of the most influential civil-rights leaders in Huntsville and Alabama in the late 1960s.He founded a black-led third party in Alabama, the National Democratic Party of Alabama (NDPA), during the height of George Wallace’s hegemony and succeeded in efforts to enfranchise thousands of voters who had previously been excluded from the political process through Jim Crow laws.