Johnny Cash is one of the most famous musicians of all time, and even though he started out playing rockabilly he went on to transcend musical genres to garner an extremely diverse fan base.
But as it turns out hate groups like the KKK and white supremacists have hated Johnny Cash since his early days- because they mistakenly thought he was married to a black woman.
Sound like a stupid reason to hate a musician with such an amazing catalog of music? Welcome to the Jim Crow South of the 1960s.
It all started on October 4, 1965 when Johnny was arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border for trying to smuggle in a bunch of amphetamines and sedatives he'd bought off a dealer in Mexico:
Customs agents found 475 Equanil tablets and 688 Dexedrine capsules stashed in his guitar case and threw him in jail. Cash spent a night in jail and, two months later, plead guilty to the possession of illegal drugs.
He got off with a deferred sentence and a $1,000 fine—and had no idea that, as he walked down the courthouse steps in El Paso, Texas, with his wife Vivian, he was about to spark a firestorm.
An Associated Press photo of Cash and Vivian ran in newspapers the next day—and to some readers, it appeared that Vivian, an Italian-American woman who was rarely photographed, was black.
The National States Rights Party, an Alabama white supremacist group, republished the photo in its newspaper, The Thunderbolt, with an article that dripped with racist rhetoric. The money generated by Cash’s hit records, it claimed, went “to scum like Johnny Cash to keep them supplied with dope and negro women.”
Cash was harassed and boycotted by some Southern fans. “Johnny and I received death threats, and an already shameful situation was made infinitely worse,” recalled Vivian in her 2008 memoir.
In an October 1966 article, Variety described Cash as “the innocent victim of a targeted hate campaign in the south.” The “racial error,” wrote the anonymous author, had sparked boycotts and threats. “In the code of the south,” the article continued, “there is no greater crime than miscegenation.” At the time, interracial marriages were banned throughout the South.
Read Why Hate Groups Went After Johnny Cash In The 1960s here