{"id":12867,"date":"2018-04-07T16:58:23","date_gmt":"2018-04-07T23:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/?p=12867"},"modified":"2018-04-08T16:59:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T23:59:19","slug":"black-wives-matter-the-johnny-cash-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/black-wives-matter-the-johnny-cash-cover-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Wives Matter: The Johnny Cash Cover-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many people who’ve seen Walk the Line<\/strong><\/a> (the movie about Johnny Cash) would be amazed by these pictures of his first wife, Vivian?<\/p>\n

I can’t get over how dismayed I am by the choice to portray Vivian Cash as a white Italian woman, given the truth.<\/p>\n

I know that at the time, it was illegal to marry a person of another race. In the South, it must have been pretty risky. And if you wanted to be a famous country performer, it would cause way too much controversy. In fact, after the photo above was printed in a newspaper, the couple were threatened by the Klan, and there was a movement to boycott Cash’s records.<\/p>\n

So his manager or someone produced records that “proved” Vivian was white. She was described as Italian or Sicilian. Now, everyone was happy.<\/p>\n

But not me. Cash had four daughters with his first wife. None of them seem eager to discuss their ethnicity, and it’s nobody’s business anyway. Still, as a fan of Johnny Cash and a gullible moviegoer, I don’t want to be fed some bullshit about his life story. Whether it’s more palatable to the public to forget about Vivian and just think about Johnny and June instead, or because the movie business still can’t stand to portray women of color, it’s dismaying.<\/p>\n

2018 is beginning to feel like 1953 in America, before civil rights and before racism was identified as something to be condemned. What the fuck! When can we go back to correcting wrongs instead of perpetuating new ones?<\/p>\n

$\"black$ <\/a><\/p>\n

I guess black people are accustomed to being whitewashed by Hollywood. I feel bad about being so ignorant.<\/p>\n

$\"black$ <\/a><\/p>\n

People argue<\/a> about Vivian’s ethnicity<\/a> and see what they want to see. I’m not a genealogist but I’m not blind either.\u00a0 I see a cover-up and I’ll never think of Johnny and June without a sense of betrayal. Fuck them.<\/p>\n

$\"black-wives-matter\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"