CYBILL SHEPHERD STILL WAVING FLAG FOR EQUAL RIGHTS

Cybill Shepherd began her quest for equal rights back in 1950 growing up in the segregated South of Memphis, Tennessee.

Cybill Shepherd doesn’t think she’ll become the poster woman for gay and lesbian rights now that she’s on The L Word because she’s been supporting equal rights for everyone for some time.

She talks about how similar marching for gay rights is to marching with Martin Luther King who we honor on his birthday.

“Well I marched on Washington for gay and lesbian rights. I think it was the year 2000, the last really major march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights at that time. I insisted that I be able to carry the banner at the front of the march and there were some people said no you can’t because you’re not gay. I said, ‘that doesn’t make sense to me.’ I think if I was marching with Martin Luther King that he wouldn’t let me not march beside him carrying the banner just because of the color of my skin. I don’t really see any difference in these issues.”

Growing up in the segregated South, Cybill says she couldn’t ignore taking a stand for equal rights.

“I was born in 1950 so I remember the colored only doors that I was not allowed to go in and the white only doors that blacks weren’t allowed to go in. At the mid South fair blacks were not allowed to go on the same day as whites and I internalized that hate. I internalized pain from that. Then in 1968 which is the year I graduated from high school they announced over the speaker that they had stopped classes, they canceled classes on that day because Martin Luther King had been assassinated in downtown. I’ll never forget walking out my high school door and being stricken with the idea that this incredible leader had been killed and I had really done nothing to help the cause of equality up to then.”

Cybill began her work with the National Civil Rights museum in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee attending the dedication ceremony with Rosa Parks, Jesse Jackson, and then Governor Bill Clinton.