Johnny Cash Statue to Replace Racist Politician in U.S. Capitol

Country music legend Johnny Cash will receive a statue in his honor in the U.S. capitol. It will be unveiled next month, House speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries announced on Thursday, NBC reported.

Cash was born on February 26, 1932 in Kingsland, a small town roughly 60 miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas. During his lifetime, he sold 90 million records worldwide. His music spanned the music genres of country, blues, rock, and gospel. In 1980, Cash was inducted into Country Music Hall of Fame, as well as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. He received numerous awards, among them, 13 Grammy’s and nine Country Music Association Awards. In 2003, Cash died at 71 years old from diabetes-related complications.

His statue joins that of another Arkansas native Daisy Bates, a civil rights leader who headed the state’s NAACP chapter and mentored the Black students who came to be known as the Little Rock Nine and integrated Central High School in 1957. Her statue was previously unveiled earlier this year in National Statuary Hall on May 8.

Both replace monuments of 19th-century attorney Uriah Rose and James P. Clarke who was a former governor and U.S. senator in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were removed due to criticism over Clarke’s racist remarks calling the Democratic Party to preserve “white standards.”

Made by Little Rock sculptor Kevin Kresse, Cash’s eight-foot-tall statue depicts him with a guitar across his back and a Bible in hand. The unveiling is slated to occur in Emancipation Hall on September 24.

This change follows an ongoing debate that emerged over the display of Confederate statues in 2020 about who or what is being publicly memorialized in the United States.