Among the white marble statesmen and bronze war heroes who stand silent sentinel through the halls of the Capitol, a musician arrived Tuesday. It was Johnny Cash, the “Man in Black” who built his fame singing about, and for, outlaws and the things love and cocaine will do to a man.
The bronze statue by Arkansas-based sculptor Kevin Kresse shows a young Cash, pensively looking down at his feet as he walks forward, a guitar slung on his back and his left hand on the strap, as if he’s just taken the stage — perhaps at San Quentin prison — to approach the microphone, swing his six-string around, and start the show like he always did: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”
It joins the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection, but this man in bronze will not walk the line that tour guides so often do. Instead, it will stay in the Capitol Visitor Center, standing near Utah’s Philo T. Farnsworth, the “Father of Television.”
Arkansas will remain represented in the old House chamber by its other new statue, unveiled in May, of civil rights leader and organizer of the Little Rock Nine, Daisy Bates. The pair replaced Arkansas’ two previous sculpted delegates, Uriah Milton Rose and James Paul Clarke. While Rose opposed secession, he remained loyal to Confederate Arkansas during the Civil War, and Clarke’s own descendants have denounced his virulently racist views.
The decision to replace the two with Cash and Bates was made in 2019 when the Arkansas state legislature passed a bill, which then-governor Asa Hutchinson signed.
According to Speaker Mike Johnson, Cash is the first professional musician to be memorialized at the Capitol. He is also, presumably, the first man arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border for drug smuggling to receive that honor, something Johnson left out of his remarks.
Johnson did, however, note that more than 100 Cash family members were in attendance for the packed ceremony, including, it turns out, himself.
“My staff ran a genealogy report,” Johnson said. “I’m the half fifth cousin four times removed of Johnny Cash.”
Cash’s Grammy-award-winning daughter, Rosanne, delivered a speech on behalf of the family. “I am very careful not to put words in his mouth since his passing, but on this day, I can safely say that he would feel that of all the many honors and accolades he received in his lifetime, this is the ultimate,” she said.
“He was a flawed but profoundly humble, kind and compassionate man with a magnificent generosity of spirit, who loved those who suffered because he knew great suffering and loss,” she said. “He was passionate in his work for the rights of prisoners, the rights of Native Americans, for impoverished children and for all those who struggled and whose prospects were dim.”
During his closing benediction, Cash’s nephew, Mike Garrett, highlighted his uncle’s Christian faith. “I have received everything this world has to offer and I have found only one thing fully and completely satisfies,” the executive director of Christian Counseling Associates of Raleigh recalled Cash telling him. “It’s Jesus.”
Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack said he was a lifelong fan, so much so he memorized the lyrics to “A Boy Named Sue” as a child. Turning to Kresse, Womack then said, “Kevin, I can actually see ‘the gravel in his gut and in the spit in his eye,’” paraphrasing the song.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries praised Cash, quoting John Adams, Bob Dylan and Snoop Dogg, who once called Cash “a real American gangster.”
Born to sharecroppers in rural Arkansas during the Great Depression, Cash went on to become one of the most prolific songwriters in the American canon, releasing more than 90 albums over his half-century-long career. He sang about outlaws and farmers, soldiers and autoworkers, lovers and cheaters. He famously performed a series of concerts in prisons and recorded some into albums, like “At Folsom Prison.”
He himself was arrested several times, often on charges related to his pill addiction, but managed to avoid felony conviction. The arrest became fodder for his outlaw country image and songs about life in jail. He served in the Air Force but later became a pacifist who famously opposed the Vietnam War.
After the younger Cash’s remarks, the U.S. Air Force band performed her father’s hit, “I Walk the Line.”
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