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Vivian Liberto
Born
Vivian Dorraine Liberto

(1934-04-23)April 23, 1934
DiedMay 24, 2005(2005-05-24) (aged 71)
Other namesVivian Cash
Vivian Distin
Occupations
  • Homemaker
  • author
Spouses
( m. 1954; div. 1966)
Dick Distin
( m. 1968)
Children4, including Rosanne and Cindy

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

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she grew up in Sicilian-American culture and was raised Catholic. Following her marriage to Cash in Texas, she was subject to controversy in 1965–1966 related to her racial identity because of publicity after her husband's arrest for drug possession. White supremacists, judging by her appearance in a widely published photo, claimed that she was black and thus married illegally to her husband. She and her husband were subject to harassment and he was boycotted for a year in the South before his manager documented her background as white.

After the couple divorced in 1966, they each married again. Cash had chief responsibility for raising their daughters. They typically spent time in the summer with their father and stepmother, both singer/songwriters.

In 2007 Distin published a memoir, prepared with Ann Sharpsteen, under her former married name of 'Vivian Cash'. It was based on her years with Johnny Cash and their many letters before their marriage.

Early life and family

Vivian (left) with Johnny and their children in 1961.

Vivian Liberto was born in San Antonio, Texas. She and her brother 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] Her father was of Sicilian descent; his parents had immigrated to New Orleans and then Texas from Cefalù, Palermo, Sicily. Her mother was of German and Irish descent; her ancestors had been in Texas since the 19th century. Vivian and her siblings grew up in Sicilian-American Catholic culture and attended white schools in the segregated state. [3]

After her marriage to Johnny Cash and their move to Memphis, Tennessee, he became increasingly successful as a country music star. In 1965, following wide publicity after he was arrested for drug possession, many people saw photos of Vivian for the first time when she accompanied him to court. Her appearance was racially ambiguous, and white supremacists accused him of having married a Negro woman, when interracial marriages were still illegal in the South. They harassed the couple and boycotted the singer in the South. [3]

Meeting Johnny Cash

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

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

After marrying they settled in Memphis, Tennessee, where Johnny Cash took a job as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Within the first year of their marriage, Cash had become a rising country music star. Eventually the couple had four daughters together: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara. [6]

Move to California

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

In 1961, Cash moved the family to a hilltop home overlooking Casitas Springs, California. He had previously brought his parents to the area to run a small trailer park called the Johnny Cash Trailer Park. As Cash was frequently away from home on tour and the area had no amenities, Vivian and her daughters became increasingly isolated. Vivian often had to dispatch rattlesnakes and other vermin around the property. [3] The couple was estranged in 1962.

Liberto later said that she had filed for divorce in 1966 because of Cash's severe drug and alcohol abuse, as well as his constant touring and his repeated acts of adultery with other women. He had become particularly close with singer June Carter, whom he later married. Vivian had primary responsibility for the four Cash daughters. [3] [8]

Personal life

Vivian and Johnny Cash had 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; and Tara.

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

In 1968, Liberto married Dick Distin, a police officer in Ventura, California. They were married until her death on May 24, 2005, from complications of lung cancer and related surgery. [10] [11]

Memoir

In 2002 Vivian was approached by freelance writer/producer Ann Sharpsteen about appearing in a retrospective program about Johnny Cash for VH1. Though she declined the offer, the two women became close friends. Vivian decided to write and publish her memoirs, hiring Sharpsteen as an editor and biographer. Liberto entitled her memoir I Walked the Line: My Life With Johnny(2007). [12]

The book is based largely on excerpts from the thousands of letters that she exchanged with Johnny Cash during their three-year separation before their marriage. In addition, it includes her recollections of their courtship, marriage, and Johnny Cash's rise to fame. She also addresses her feelings toward singer June Carter, who married Cash after his divorce from Vivian. [5]

Racist attacks on the couple

In 1965 Vivian's husband, Johnny Cash, was arrested in Texas for possession of hundreds of amphetamine pills and bringing drugs into the United States across the Mexican border. Though the couple had been estranged for three years, Vivian flew to El Paso, Texas to accompany Cash to his court hearing. [13] A widely circulated black and white photograph of them leaving the courthouse brought Vivian Cash to public notice for the first time. The Thunderbolt, a racist newsletter published by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader J.B. Stoner, published an article with inflammatory language. It was distributed by the White supremacist National States' Rights Party.

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

Nearly two years later, the KKK revived their attack on the singer. They were unhappy about his criticism of the United States' treatment of Native Americans [3] [15] and his association with counterculture figures, including Bob Dylan.

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

Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash's manager, met with Robert Shelton, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and threatened a $200,000 lawsuit for harassment. Holiff also contacted national and local newspapers to correct the story; his efforts included a well-received article in the New York Post. [17] He arranged to have Vivian Cash's background researched and documented. Specialists noted Vivian's designation as White on her marriage certificate in Texas, a list of the Whites-only schools she had attended in the segregated state, and letters from close associates attesting to their knowledge of her identity. With his wife established as "white", Johnny Cash was judged acceptable and was booked again in venues in the South. [18]

Genealogy

In February 2021, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the show Finding Your Roots, featured Rosanne Cash as a guest. His researchers had studied both sides of her parents' families.

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

They found her mother's known German and Irish ancestors. They also found that one of her four maternal great-great-great-grandmothers was Sally Shields, a woman of mixed-race who was born into slavery in Alabama. Her mother was an enslaved African American. Her white father and master was William Bryant Shields, a planter born in North Carolina and the son of an Irish immigrant. He also fathered Shields's eight siblings.

He used his wealth and political influence to gain an act of the legislature in 1848 to free all nine of his children. [19]

Shields was noted in other records as "not recognized in good society," probably because of his acknowledgement of his mixed-race family and efforts on their behalf. [19] The legislature's act was conditional, stipulating that the Shields's children's 'freedom' was “confined as to residence to the counties of Perry, Dallas and Wilcox.” [19] Further, it precluded them from being able to inherit land. [20]

Gates found that Sarah had married a white man, Andrew Robinson, in 1838 in Perry County, Alabama, while she was still enslaved, when the marriage was illegal. [19] Her husband posted a $200 bond to gain registration by the county clerk, to make it legal. [19]

The Robinson children were of predominately white ancestry; their children were classified as mulatto in the 1870 census in 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 did their descendants. [3]

According to DNA, Rosanne Cash has 3.3% sub-Saharan African ancestry. While the researchers had not found written confirmation, the DNA data indicated that Rosanne also had African ancestry on her father Johnny Cash's side. Through her African ancestry, she (and her sisters) are cousins of actor Angela Bassett. [19]

Originally living near each other in Perry County, most of the extended Shields family left Alabama and migrated to Texas, where they were less identifiable as being of mixed race. To avoid being drafted into the Confederacy, the Robinson family and other Shields siblings migrated during the Civil War to Mexico for a time. After the war, they returned to Texas. [20] By the 1830s, the census and death records of Andrew and Sarah (Shields) Robinson's descendants listed them all as white. [19]

According to Cash's official biographer Ann Sharpsteen, and her own words in her 2007 memoir, Vivian strongly identified throughout her life as a white Sicilian-American, which was the culture she grew up in. She did not know about her ancestor Sarah Shields and her children, and never identified as multiracial or black. Cash said in her memoir, "It didn't help that Johnny issued a statement to the KKK informing them that I wasn't black. To this day I hate when accusations and threats from people like that are dignified with any response at all." [13]

Representation in other media

  • 'Rosanne Cash dedicated her album, Black Cadillac to Vivian Liberto, her father, and stepmother, June Carter Cash. The tracks “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 and by Anna Grace Stewart in the CMT miniseries Sun Records.
  • Liberto's life was chronicled in the documentary, My Darling Vivian (2020). [21]

References

  1. ^ Alice Winkler (May 17, 2000). "I Walk The Line". NPR. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  2. ^ Vivian Cash with Ann Sharpsteen, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny (2007), p. 27
  3. ^ a b c d e f Sydney Trent (May 16, 2021). Sally Buzbee (ed.). "White supremacists attacked Johnny Cash for marrying a 'Negro' woman. But was his first wife Black?". The Washington Post. Ann Arbor. ISSN  0190-8286. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  4. ^ "Why Hate Groups Went After Johnny Cash in the 1960s". History. Retrieved November 7, 2018.
  5. ^ a b Maslin, Janet (August 30, 2007). "When Man in Black Was Just Johnny". The New York Times. p. D 7. ISSN  0362-4331.
  6. ^ Vivian Cash at the African American Registry
  7. ^ Eric Lensing (April 26, 2021). "Johnny Cash (1932–2003)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Central Arkansas Library System. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  8. ^ Brett Johnson (September 18, 2019). "The Man in Black's first wife, Vivian Cash, tells of romance, heartbreak". Ventura County Star. Gannet. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  9. ^ Johnson, Brett (August 30, 2007). "The Man in Black's first wife, Vivian Cash, tells of romance, heartbreak". VC Star. Camarillo, California. p. D 7.
  10. ^ Valerie J Nelson (May 17, 2005). "Vivian L. Distin, 71; Inspired Hit by Husband Johnny Cash". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  11. ^ Nate Day (May 17, 2021). "Johnny Cash's first wife had Black heritage, DNA test proves". Fox News. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  12. ^ Vivian Cash with Ann Sharpsteen, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny (2007), Foreword
  13. ^ a b Vivian Cash with Ann Sharpsteen, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny – September 4, 2007, First Edition, 2001 p. 315
  14. ^ Julie Chadwick, The Man Who Carried Cash: Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash, and the Making of an American Icon, p. 376
  15. ^ Stephen Dalton (January 13, 2006). "Walk the line, yes. Toe it, no: Rosanne Cash fills Stephen Dalton in on what she learnt at daddy Johnny's knee". The Sunday Times. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
  16. ^ Julie Chadwick, The Man Who Carried Cash, p. 436
  17. ^ Julie Chadwick, The Man Who Carried Cash: Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash, and the Making of an American Icon p. 376
  18. ^ Robert Hilburn, Johnny Cash: The Life (2013), pp. 285–286
  19. ^ a b c d e f g h Henry Louis Gates Jr., Rosanne Cash (February 23, 2021). "African American Ancestry". Season 7, Episode 6: Country Roots (TV show). Finding Your Roots. PBS. Event occurs at 0:45-1:45. Retrieved November 12, 2021.
  20. ^ a b Joseph C Platt (April 18, 2021). "The Shields Family: A Dichotomy of Race in US Society through Two Family Lines". Texas A&M University. A&M-Commerce Digital Commons net. Retrieved March 10, 2023.
  21. ^ Betts, Stephen (April 29, 2020). "Johnny Cash's First Wife Profiled in New Doc 'My Darling Vivian': What We Learned". Rolling Stone. New York City.

External links