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Sheryll D. Cashin is a law
professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
at
Georgetown University Law Center The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and ...
. She was born and raised in
Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in ...
, where her parents were political activists. Her parents' role in the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
impressed on her the importance of political engagement, and instilled values that still influence her research and discussion.Backstory


Family and home

Political involvement and activism were ideals in Sheryll Cashin's family, leading her to pursue racial issues including segregation and inequality. At the start of the civil rights movement in early 1962, Cashin's mother Joan was arrested in a sit-in protest at a lunch counter, while holding the four month old Sheryll. Her father John L. Cashin, Jr., a dentist, was an influential civil-rights leader in Huntsville and Alabama in the late 1960s. He challenged George Wallace in the 1970 Alabama gubernatorial election. 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 enfranchised thousands of voters whom
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
had excluded from the political process. Cashin's great-grandfather, Herschel V. Cashin was a
radical Republican The Radical Republicans (later also known as "Stalwarts") were a faction within the Republican Party, originating from the party's founding in 1854, some 6 years before the Civil War, until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Recon ...
legislator in Alabama during Reconstruction. He was born in Antebellum Georgia, and was the child of a white Irishman and a free- mulatto woman. Sheryll Cashin's family also became the first black family on the block, when they moved in 1966 from Lydia Drive in northwest Huntsville to Owens Drive, at the foot of Monte Sano.


Education

Cashin graduated summa cum laude from
Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...
in 1984 with a
bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in electrical engineering. She also obtained her masters in English Law with honors from St. Catherine's College, Oxford in 1986 as a
Marshall Scholar The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...
, and obtained her J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School in 1989.


Career

While working in the Clinton White House, Cashin served as an advisor on urban and economic policy, particularly concerning community development in
inner city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists some ...
neighborhoods. She was also law clerk to
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
Justice
Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...
and Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. After her clerkships, Cashin worked as an Associate Counsel for the Office of Transition Counsel and as an associate at Sirote & Permutt, P.C. As a professor of law at Georgetown University, Cashin teaches Constitutional Law, Local Government Law, Property, Administrative Law, and Race and American Law. She writes about race relations, government and inequality in America, as well as housing segregation.


Literary career

Sheryll Cashin has written four books, including ''The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream,'' which depicts how segregation by race and class is ruining American democracy. After studying data on school enrollment and census tracts, Cashin drew that racial separation still persists in schools and communities. She argues that we need a transformation of the now ingrained assumption that separation is acceptable in order to solve the riddle of inequality in America." ''The Agitator's Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African-American Family'' covers the arc of U.S. relations from slavery through the post-civil rights era. Cashin has also contributed book chapters. She also has written journal articles, and is a frequent radio and T.V. commentator. She has appeared on ''NPR All Things Considered, The Diane Rehm Show, The Tavis Smiley Show,
The Newshour With Jim Lehrer ''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS member stations. It airs seven nights a week, and is known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events. Anchored by Judy Woodruff, the prog ...
,'' CNN, BET, ABC News, and numerous local programs.


Works

*''The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream,'' New York: PublicAffairs, 2005. , *''The Agitator's Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African-American Family'' Public Affairs, 2009. , *''Place, not race : a new vision of opportunity in america.'' Boston: Beacon Press, 2015. , *''Loving : interracial intimacy in America and the threat to white supremacy'', Boston: Beacon Press, 2017. , *''White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality'', Boston: Beacon Press, 2021. ,


See also

*
List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 10) Law clerks have assisted the justices of the United States Supreme Court in various capacities since the first one was hired by Justice Horace Gray in 1882. Each justice is permitted to have between three and four law clerks per Court term. Mos ...


Notes


External links


Georgetown Law FacultyExplore Georgetown
*
''The Huntsville Times''Sheryll Cashin's Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cashin, Sheryll D. African-American women lawyers African-American legal scholars American women legal scholars American legal scholars American women lawyers Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Georgetown University Law Center faculty Marshall Scholars Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford Harvard Law School alumni Vanderbilt University alumni Lawyers from Huntsville, Alabama 1961 births Living people 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American women lawyers 21st-century American lawyers 21st-century American women lawyers 21st-century African-American academics 21st-century American academics 20th-century African-American lawyers 21st-century African-American lawyers