Statue Of Late Singer Johnny Cash Unveiled At The U.S. Capitol, Sister Joanne Cash Speaks

A statue of the late singer-songwriter Johnny Cash was unveiled at the U.S. Capitol. It took nearly five years to get the statue to Capitol Hill.

In 2019, the Arkansas legislature voted to replace the state’s two statues at the time, Uriah Rose and Sen. James Clarke, which stood for over 100 years.

The then-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) pushed for the replacement. “It’s been over 100 years since the statutes were replaced for Arkansas, and our state has changed,” Hutchinson told NPR. “James Clarke was a segregationist. You had Uriah Rose, who was a Confederate sympathizer. They do not reflect what our state represents today.”

Statues of civil rights leader Daisy Bates, whose statue was installed in May, and Cash had been chosen to replace the statues representing the state of Arkansas.

“Whenever you look at who reflects Arkansas and who tells the story of Arkansas’s progress, one should be in the civil rights era, and that’s Daisy Bates, who’s an icon that guided the Little Rock Nine and the desegregation of Central High School,” the former Arkansas governor stated. “What an incredible story of courage and progress for our state. And then, of course, the other one is Johnny Cash. His songs come from the dirt of the flatland of Arkansas. It’s a story about struggle and his progress in life and his fighting for the underdog.”

The unveiling ceremony made Cash the first musician to be honored with a statue as part of the Statuary Hall collection.

This collection includes two statues donated by every state to honor notable figures in state history.

The eight-foot bronze statue showed Cash with slicked-back hair, his head lowered, a guitar slung across his back as he held a bible in his hand, a symbol of his everlasting faith.

Little Rock artist Kevin Kresse sculpted it.

“It is my pleasure as Speaker of the House to welcome you all to the Capitol today in what is a truly remarkable occasion,” House Speaker Mike Johnson stated during the ceremony. “Today, we have the pleasure of recognizing get this the first musician ever to be honored with a statue here in the Capitol.”

“Johnny Cash is the perfect person to be honored in that way,” Johnson added. “He was a man who embodied the American Spirit in a way that few could.”

“I’m very careful not to put words in his mouth since his passing,” Cash’s daughter, Roseanne Cash, stated at the event. “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.”

Roseanne then declared that when “you see this statue, and you know this is no one else but Johnny Cash.”

The singer’s younger sister, Joanne Cash, attended the ceremony. 

Joanne, now blind, took a moment to touch the lower part of the monument after it had been unveiled.

On July 22, 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve the bill to remove the 11 statues honoring Confederate leaders displayed in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall collection.

It was approved by 305 to 113 votes. All Democrats and 72 Republicans voted for it, while all “no” votes came from Republican Party lawmakers.