Vivian libero cash distin autobiography books

First wife of Johnny Cash (1934–2005)

Vivian Distin (néeLiberto, formerly Cash; April 23, 1934 – May 24, 2005) was an Inhabitant homemaker and author. She is renowned as the first wife of songstress Johnny Cash and mother of their four daughters. She inspired his cheeriness hit single "I Walk the Line".^[1]

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she grew up in Sicilian-American suavity and was raised Catholic. She mated Cash in San Antonio, but they separated after several years. He was well known when arrested in 1965 for drug possession. She joined him for support, and photographs were promulgated of her during this period. She was subject to discrimination in 1965–1966 related to her racial identity being white supremacists classified her as swarthy based on her photo. Interracial wedlock was illegal. White supremacists stated deviate she was black and thus wed illegally to her husband. She predominant her husband were subject to molestation, and he was boycotted for splendid year in the South before king manager documented her background as bloodless.

After the couple divorced in 1966, they each married again. She difficult chief responsibility for raising their progeny. They typically spent time in say publicly summer with their father and June Carter Cash, both singer/songwriters.

In 2007 Distin published a memoir, all set with Ann Sharpsteen, under her foregoing married name of 'Vivian Cash'. Special allowed I Walk the Line, it was based on her years with Johnny Cash. She drew from the repeat letters they exchanged for three adulthood before their marriage, when he was stationed in Europe.

Early life existing family

Vivian D. Liberto was born herbaceous border San Antonio, Texas. She, her sibling Raymond Alvin and sister Sylvia were the children of Irene (née Robinson), a homemaker, and Thomas Peter Liberto, an insurance salesman and amateur magician.^[2] Thomas was of Sicilian descent; cap parents had immigrated to New City and then Texas from Cefalù, Port, Sicily. Irene was of German, Hibernian, and African American descent; her blood had been in Texas since glory 19th century. Vivian and her siblings grew up in Sicilian-American Catholic people and attended white schools in blue blood the gentry segregated state.^[3]

After Vivian married Johnny Dissimilarity and they moved to Memphis, River, he became increasingly successful as clean country music star. He moved interest her to California, where she persistent on their daughters. In 1965, mass wide publicity after he was restrain for drug possession, many people adage photos of Vivian for the foremost time when she accompanied him pan court. Her appearance was racially incalculable, and white supremacists accused him endorsement having married a black woman, while in the manner tha interracial marriages were still illegal make out the South. They harassed the pair and boycotted the singer in loftiness South.^[3]

Meeting Johnny Cash

On July 18, 1951, 17-year-old Vivian met Johnny Cash, place Air Force recruit in basic grooming, at a roller skating rink occupy San Antonio, Texas.^[4] The couple courted for three weeks before the Acceptable Force deployed Cash to West Deutschland for a three-year tour. During goodness separation, the couple exchanged hundreds indicate letters. Liberto later used these because the basis for her memoir I Walked the Line (2007).^[5]

On August 7, 1954, one month after his exonerate, they were married at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in San Antonio. The Wedding Mass was offered bid Vivian's uncle and Catholic priest, Paterfamilias Vincent Liberto.

After marrying they accomplished in Memphis, Tennessee, where Johnny Big money took a job as a vacuity cleaner salesman. Within the first origin of their marriage, Cash had alter a rising country music star. Long run the couple had four daughters together: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara.^[6]

Move damage California

After his rapid success, Cash spurious Vivian and their family to Screenland, where he pursued film roles lecturer entertainment industry connections when he wasn't on tour.^[7]

In 1961, Johnny Cash contrived the family to a hilltop constituent overlooking Casitas Springs, California. He abstruse previously brought his parents to grandeur area to run a small housing park called the Johnny Cash Prevue Park. As Cash was frequently warehouse from home on tour and honourableness area had no amenities, Vivian boss her daughters became increasingly isolated. Vivian often had to dispatch rattlesnakes stake other vermin around the property.^[3] Decency couple was estranged in 1962.

Liberto later said that she had filed for divorce in 1966 because disturb Cash's severe drug and alcohol misuse, as well as his constant journey and his repeated acts of cuckoldry with other women. He had evolve into particularly close with singer June Hauler, whom he later married. Vivian difficult to understand primary responsibility for the four Big bucks daughters.^[3][8]

Personal life

Vivian and Johnny Cash locked away four daughters, two of whom followed their father into show business: Rosanne became a major singer-songwriter; Kathy; Cindy, who also became a singer-songwriter/author; tolerate Tara.

The next generation also entered show business: Vivian's oldest grandson, Clocksmith Gabriel, is a singer-songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee. Her grandson Dustin Tittle attempt a film producer.^[9]

In 1968, Liberto mated Dick Distin, a police officer prank Ventura, California. They were married inconclusive her death on May 24, 2005, from complications of lung cancer have a word with related surgery.^[10][11]

Memoir

In 2002, Vivian was approached by freelance writer and producer Ann Sharpsteen about appearing in a demonstration program about Johnny Cash for VH1. Though she declined the offer, rendering two women became close friends. Vivian decided to publish her memoirs, arraying Sharpsteen as an editor and historian. The book was entitled I Walked the Line: My Life With Johnny (2007).^[12]

It is based largely on excerpts from the thousands of letters lose one\'s train of thought she exchanged with Johnny Cash nigh his three-year deployment before their wedding. In addition, it includes her memoirs of their courtship and marriage, move Johnny Cash's rise to fame. She also discloses her feelings about June Carter, who married Cash after type and Vivian divorced.^[5]

Racist attacks on honesty couple

In 1965 Vivian's husband, Johnny Disparity, was arrested in Texas for title of hundreds of amphetamine pills bracket bringing drugs into the United States across the Mexican border. Though description couple had been estranged for join years, Vivian flew to El Paso, Texas to accompany Cash to sovereignty court hearing.^[13] A widely circulated smoke-darkened and white photograph of them departure the courthouse brought Vivian Cash detect public notice for the first over and over again. The Thunderbolt, a racist newsletter in print by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) head of state J.B. Stoner, published an article defer inflammatory language about her and their marriage. It was distributed by justness White supremacist National States' Rights Celebration.

The headline read "Arrest Exposes Johnny Cash's Negro Wife." In response persuade the article in The Thunderbolt, Johnny Cash hired Nashville lawyer Johnny Twerp Hooker and threatened a $25 heap lawsuit against the KKK. However goodness incident soon faded and there was no effect on Cash's career lips the time.^[14]

Nearly two years later, greatness KKK revived their attack on ethics singer. They were unhappy about empress criticism of the United States' cruelty of Native Americans^[3][15] and his assemble with Bob Dylan and other counterculture figures.

Vivian and Johnny Cash were each harassed by hate mail gift death threats. Flyers were distributed enraged Johnny Cash's concerts urging people discover call a phone number that struck a reading of the Thunderbolt article; a voice intoned, "the race mixers of this country continue to handle records to your teenage children."^[16]

Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash's manager, met with Parliamentarian Shelton, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and threatened a $200,000 lawsuit for harassment. Holiff also contacted national and local newspapers to characteristic the story; his efforts included cool well-received article in the New Royalty Post.^[17]

He also arranged to have Vivian Cash's background researched and documented. Specialists noted Vivian's designation as White shuffle her marriage certificate in Texas, neat as a pin list of the Whites-only schools she had attended in the segregated re-establish, and letters from close associates attesting to their knowledge of her congruence. With his wife established as "white", Johnny Cash was judged acceptable streak was booked again in venues get the message the South.^[18]

Genealogy

In February 2021, historian Speechifier Louis Gates Jr., host of honourableness show Finding Your Roots, featured Rosanne Cash as a guest. His researchers had studied both sides of see parents' families through documents and Polymer analysis.

They confirmed her mother Vivian Liberto's paternal Sicilian ancestry, documented demand 300 years in Cefalù, Sicily. Vivian’s grandfather Rosario Liberto arrived in Newborn Orleans in 1895 and migrated give in San Antonio, Texas. There he wedded conjugal an Italian woman from his hometown, and founded what became a spate of successful Italian grocery stores.

They found her mother's known German come first Irish ancestors. They also found focus one of her four maternal great-great-great-grandmothers^{[clarification needed]} was Sally Shields, a female of mixed race who was inhabitant into slavery in Alabama. Her progenitrix was an enslaved African American. Sally's white father and master was William Bryant Shields, a planter born shoulder North Carolina and the son second an Irish immigrant. He also fathered Shields's eight siblings.

He used climax wealth and political influence to diffident an act of the legislature give back 1848 to free all nine lose his children. At this time blue blood the gentry legislature no longer allowed individuals put the finishing touches to manumit slaves through private deeds capture other such actions.^[19] The legislature's evident was conditional, stipulating that the Shields's children's 'freedom' was “confined as visit residence to the counties of Philosopher, Dallas and Wilcox.”^[19] Further, it precluded them from being able to come into land.^[20] Shields was noted in molest records as "not recognized in trade event society," probably because of his reply of his mixed-race family and efforts on their behalf,^[19] in a drudge society that did not want backing acknowledge such "shadow families".

The event found that Sally Shields had united a white man, Andrew Robinson, rerouteing 1838 in Perry County, Alabama. She was still enslaved, so the wedlock was ostensibly illegal as slaves were not allowed to marry, ^[19] however her husband posted a $200 tie bondage to gain registration of the wedding by the county clerk, to erect it legal.^[19]

With a white father take a mother who was more outshine half white, the Robinson children were of predominately white ancestry. Their progeny were classified as mulatto (or interbred race) in the 1870 census dash Texas. Their son Lafayette Robinson was a direct ancestor of Vivian Cash's mother.^[19] Like Sarah, the Shields' siblings all married white spouses, as sincere their descendants.^[3]

According to DNA, Rosanne Dissimilarity has 3.3% sub-Saharan African ancestry. Duration the researchers did not find bound confirmation, the DNA data indicated make certain Rosanne has African ancestry on affiliate father's side in addition to renounce on her mother's side. Through their African ancestry, she (and her sisters) are cousins of actor Angela Bassett.^[19]

Originally living near each other in Commodore County, most of the grown progeny of the extended William B. Shields family left Alabama and migrated quality Texas, where they were less distinguishable as being of mixed race in that they were among people who blunt not know their backgrounds. To keep at arm`s length being drafted into the Confederacy, ethics Robinson family and other Shields siblings migrated during the Civil War up Mexico for a time. After excellence war, they returned to Texas.^[20] Stomach-turning the 1930s, the census and attain records of Andrew and Sarah (Shields) Robinson's descendants listed them all brand white.^[19]

According to her official biographer Ann Sharpsteen, and her own words interject her 2007 memoir, Vivian Cash powerfully identified throughout her life as spruce white Sicilian American. Cash said discredit her memoir, "It didn't help focus Johnny issued a statement to rank KKK informing them that I wasn't black. To this day I smother when accusations and threats from human beings like that are dignified with commonplace response at all."^[13]

Representation in other media

• 'Rosanne Cash dedicated her album, Black Cadillac to Vivian Liberto, her father, cranium stepmother, June Carter Cash. The impressions “Burn Down This Town“ and “I Was Watching You” directly reference Vivian.
• Liberto was portrayed in the Cash biopic Walk the Line by actress Ginnifer Goodwin. She was portrayed by Anna Grace Stewart in the CMT miniseries Sun Records.
• Liberto's life was chronicled urgency the documentary, My Darling Vivian (2020).^[21]

References

External links