Shelby, 38, said she began to do her own education about marriage equality when a friend was removed from the decision-making process over his partner's affairs in the last months of his partner's life. The man explained to her that if they had the opportunity to marry, his removal from his partner's life wouldn't have happened.

Shelby asked friends what she could do, because she thought, "There has to be a way to help educate others in the way I educated myself."

A mutual friend introduced her to Andrea Shorter, deputy marriage and coalitions coordinator for Equality California, the statewide LGBT rights organization. Shelby said she expressed a desire to do something because she believed there were others in the African American community who she could help to understand "what marriage equality truly means."