Civil rights leader John L. Cashin Jr. dies at 82

John Logan Cashin Jr. was born on April 16, 1928, in Huntsville. His father was a dentist and his mother was a school principal. His grandfather, Herschel Cashin, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama legislature in the 1870s.

Dr. Cashin received a bachelor’s degree from Tennessee State University and a dental degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville. From 1955 to 1957, he served in the U.S. Army Dental Corps.

Personal Post

He and his father had a private practice together in Huntsville. In 1964, the younger Dr. Cashin ran unsuccessfully for city mayor.

It was “the first time Huntsville had seen any black candidates for public office,” Dr. Cashin told the Huntsville Times in 1996. “We knew we weren’t going to win, but somebody had to break the ice.”

In 1966, the Cashin family moved into a white middle-class neighborhood in Huntsville, becoming the first black family on the block. Dr. Cashin drove a Rolls-Royce and flew his own single-engine plane. He practiced dentistry until the city of Huntsville claimed his office under eminent domain in the mid-1970s.

His self-funded political ambitions soon drained his family’s resources. Dr. Cashin came under scrutiny by the FBI and officials from the Internal Revenue Service said he owed $780,000 in back taxes.

The family “experienced a great reversal of economic fortune,” wrote his daughter, Georgetown University law professor Sheryll Cashin, in her 2008 memoir, “The Agitator’s Daughter.”

Dr. Cashin was convicted of theft in 1982 for depositing his deceased mother’s pension and Social Security checks over a period of several years. The same year, he was convicted of perjury for lying to a judge in an unrelated case. He spent 17 months in a minimum-security federal prison.

His wife of 39 years, Joan Carpenter Cashin, died in 1997. He married the former Louise White in 1998.

Besides his second wife, who lives in Washington, survivors include three children from his first marriage, Sheryll Cashin of Washington, John M. Cashin of Lagos, Nigeria, and Carroll L. Cashin of Huntsville; and five grandchildren.