Johnny Cash’s Daughter Shares ‘Heartbreak’: Finds Out Mom’s Black Ancestor Was Enslaved
“It feels heartbreaking,” Rosanne Cash admitted through tears after finding out that an ancestor of her mother, Vivian Liberto Cash — who was famous for being the first wife of singer-songwriter Johnny Cash — was enslaved. This ancestor was Vivian’s maternal great-great grandmother, a Black woman named Sarah Shields, whom Rosanne learned about for the first time ever during an episode of the PBS show Finding Your Roots that aired in Feb. 2021. At the time, only Vivian’s European background had been known, and this discovery in her ancestry resurfaced thanks to a profile on Johnny’s first wife in The Washington Post on May 16.