A statue of Johnny Cash has been placed in the National Statuary Hall, a hall in the Capitol building that houses statues of the most important figures in the history of the United States. Arkansas officials decided to replace the old statues because – they say – they did not reflect what their state represents today.
Johnny Cash is more than just a country music legend to Americans. Now, he will be the first musician to have his own statue in the famous National Statuary Hall, among other notable figures from history. USA. The hall contains a total of 100 statues – two donated by each state to honor the most important people from their states. “Johnny Cash is the perfect person to honor in this way. He was a man who embodied the American spirit in a way that few others could,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said during Tuesday's unveiling ceremony.
The bronze statue shows Cash with a guitar slung across his back and a Bible in his hand. “Dad was a man of contradictions. He opposed the war in Vietnam and performed for the troops. He performed for Nixon at the White House and respectfully declined to sing one of the songs the president asked him to sing because it criticized welfare recipients. Dad thought it was “denigrated the poor,” his daughter, Rosanne Cash, said at the ceremony.
Washington, D.C. Johnny Cash statue in CapitolPAP/EPA/SHAWN THEW
Johnny Cash Honored With Capitol Statue
Johnny Cash was born in 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas. He died 21 years ago, on September 12, 2003, in Tennessee. As NPR writes, although he is most often associated with country music, he did not limit himself to one genre. “At different times, he was involved in country music, blues, rock 'n' roll and gospel style,” said Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. “He was a pioneer who set trends,” he added.
The process of moving the musician’s statue to the Capitol took nearly five years. In 2019, the Arkansas Legislature voted to replace the state’s two statues at the time: Uriah Rose and Sen. James Clarke, a move pushed for by then-Governor Asa Hutchinson. “It’s been over a hundred years since Arkansas’s monuments were put up, and our state has changed. James Clarke was a segregationist, and Uriah Rose was a Confederate sympathizer,” Hutchinson told NPR. “(The monuments) don’t reflect what our state is today,” he said.
So the old state statues were replaced with new ones, featuring civil rights activist Daisy Bates and Johnny Cash. “When you look at who represents Arkansas and who tells the story of the state's development, you have to be in the civil rights era. Daisy Bates, an icon of that era, led the Little Rock Nine (a group of African-American students who led the way to desegregate schools as unconstitutional). It's an incredible story of courage and progress for our state,” Hutchinson said. “The second one is Johnny Cash, of course. His songs are about his transformation and his fight for the underdog,” he said.
As NPR reports, there have been calls for the past decade to remove segregationist statues from the U.S. Capitol. States, like Arkansas, have the power to change the statues that represent them. In 2022, Florida replaced a statue of a Confederate general with a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, making her the first African-American woman to have a statue placed in the National Statuary Hall. However, several statues of Confederate figures remain in the hall, including a statue of Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America.
Main image source: PAP/EPA/SHAWN THEW