John Cashin Memorial Saturday, April 16 in Huntsville

Dr. John L. Cashin, Jr.

(April 16, 1928 – March 21, 2011)

John L. Cashin, Jr., founder of the National Democratic Party of Alabama (NDPA), died on March 21, 2011 at SHW - Hadley Hospital in Washington, DC. He was 82. Memorial Services for Dr. Cashin will be held on Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 2pm at the First Missionary Baptist Church, 3509 Blue Springs Road NW, Huntsville, AL.

Dr. Cashin practiced dentistry in Huntsville, Alabama for decades but his avocation and passion was black political enfranchisement in his home state. He founded the National Democratic Party of Alabama in 1967 at a time when the Alabama Democratic Party was dominated by George Wallace and still operated under the official slogan "White Supremacy for the Right." He intentionally recruited whites to the NDPA and organized a bi-racial delegation that unsuccessfully sought to be seated at the 1968 and 1972 Democratic National Conventions as alternatives to the segregationist Alabama Democratic Party.

Cashin led the NDPA until it closed in 1976 and financed much of its activity from his dental practice and personal savings. The party was most influential in the 17 counties of the Black Belt, where, after passage of the Voting Rights Act, registered black voters typically far outnumbered registered whites.

In 1968, when the state of Alabama initially refused to place NDPA candidates on the ballot, Cashin and the party filed suit and ultimately brought an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Hadnott v. Amos, the Court ordered the state to reverse course. When Greene County, Alabama defied the Supreme Court's order and left NDPA

candidates off its local ballot in November 1968, Cashin and NDPA returned to the Supreme Court and it ordered the county to hold a special election on July 29, 1969. All six of NDPA's candidates won, marking the first time in the twentieth century that African

Americans held every major office in a Deep South county.

Dr. Cashin ran for governor against George Wallace in 1970 as head of an NDPA ticket that again included candidates for local offices throughout the state. Enabling semi-literate black sharecroppers to vote for the entire slate of NDPA candidates by marking an X under the party's easily recognizable ballot symbol, an eagle, had been Cashin's

strategy. He garnered 125,491 votes, most of which were cast in the Black Belt, the election brought the total number of black elected officials in the state to 107, then the highest of any southern state, and sending a black man, Thomas Reed, to the Alabama legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.

Throughout his life, John remained extremely active in causes and organizations he cared deeply about, including the Alabama New South Coalition, the Alabama Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the Huntsville Chapters of the NAACP, Omega Psi Phi, Operation PUSH, and Elks Lodge. In 1996, John conceived of a memorial to the “Buffalo Soldiers,” based upon their contributions to the Spanish American War and their time stationed in Huntsville in the late 1890s, which had been chronicled in a book co-written by his grandfather Herschel, Under Fire with the Tenth Calvary. The monument was dedicated in April 2010 on the grounds of the school that sits atop the Calvary’s former encampment in Huntsville. In the 1990s, John was also a fierce advocate for a new Alabama Constitution and for black farmers in the state. During that decade he also wrote an opinion column that was syndicated in more than two-dozen African-American owned newspapers throughout the country. His life is chronicled in The Agitator’s Daughter, a family memoir written by his daughter, Sheryll Cashin.

Were he here today, Dr. Cashin would ask you to honor his memory by voting, organizing to oppose injustice, and unceasingly following the activist creed of his hero, Frederick Douglass: “agitate, agitate, agitate!”

I worked with Dr Cashin on the NDPA as a member of the Executive Committee and editor of the Eagle Eye, the party's newspaper. I joined the party because I felt the NDPA was the most important force in the fight to bring freedom and democracy to the benighted state of Alabama. Under John's leadership the NDPA lived up to and exceeded my hopes.

During my years with the NDPA, I found John to be a leader with that rare combination of high ideals and pragmatic analysis, fierce determination and a profound sense of humor.

The State of Alabama and the nation owe Dr Cashin a debt that can only be repaid by those of us left carrying on his work. The Struggle continues...

We miss you John,

Jim Bains