[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by edtiques

Truth is a stranger to the fiction Dept. A photo that set in motion a lot of problems for the couple. Johnny Cash was married to an African American woman in the 1950s.
They would say she was Italian ( which in itself could mean she has African blood, but suspected it was more than just that ) but the Klan down south gave them the side eye protesting him and his shows.
"That was a perilous time to be an interracial couple, so give props to them both."
Turns out the ” man in black “ was a true rebel and lived life on his terms, with respect! She ended up bowing out of the marriage ( after ten years and children, Roseanne Cash being one ), as the stress of it got to be too much for her. Even now in the movies, they don’t portray her as she was…

According to research, her great great grandmother was Black but she was otherwise of European heritage.

Vivian Cash’s maternal great-great grandmother was indeed an enslaved Black woman, Sarah Shields, whose White father in 1848 had granted her and her eight siblings their freedom and their passage into Whiteness, too. Shields married a White man — albeit illegally — and by the time Jim Crow arrived in the 1930s all of her children and their descendants were listed as White.