Johnny Cash, the “Man in Black,” has now joined all the white marble and bronze statues of other famous Americans in the National Statuary Hall Collection under the dome of the U.S. Capitol.
With the unveiling (Sept. 24, 2024) of the larger-than-life sized statue, Cash becomes the first musician honored in the 160-year history of the Hall. The bronze statue by sculptor and fellow Arkansan Kevin Kresse depicts Cash (1932-2003) in his trademark long-tailed dress coat with his guitar slung over his back while clutching a Bible. His head is bowed and his right hand is pressed over his heart.
Besides being the first professional musician included, Cash is also probably the only arrested drug smuggler among the other 99 statues. (He was busted at the U.S.-Mexico border with illegal pills during his drug addiction days of the early 1960s.)
Cash becomes the newest statue since North Carolina added one of Rev. Billy Graham in May. The two men once shared a stage at an outdoor Nashville stadium.
The National Statuary Hall was created by Congress in 1864 and permits each state to have two statues. The states have different selection processes and criteria and some statues have been removed in favor of others, beginning with the first replacements in 2003.
This year Arkansas replaced its two statues of Confederacy and slavery sympathizers (Uriah Milton Rosa and James P. Clarke) with Cash and a statue of Daisy Bates, a Black woman who helped organize the de-segregation efforts of public schools by the Little Rock Nine in 1957.
A full-capacity tribute
The collection of statues has outgrown its original location in the Statuary Hall and some are now placed in adjacent rooms and halls of the U.S. Capitol. Among the Americans honored by their home states are several former U.S. presidents, other historic statesmen, several women from different generations, a few famous inventors, more than one Native American and a Hawaiian king.
Cash is the only professional entertainer in the Hall unless you count Ronald Reagan’s statue which is probably there because he was a former California governor and U.S. president and not for being a ‘B’ movie star.
Some of the other statues included are of educator Helen Keller; Thomas Edison; Louisiana’s Huey P. “Kingfish” Long; TV inventor Philo Farnsworth; Confederate President and Mississippi native Jefferson Davis; Arizona’s firebrand conservative U.S. senator Barry Goldwater; Sarah Winnemucca, a North Piute and Native American activist; Popé, who led a Pueblo Indian revolt against the Spanish in his homelands before it became the state of New Mexico; and Hawaiian royalty Kamehameha.
The Confederate Army’s general Robert E. Lee had a statue in the Hall until just a few years ago when the state of Virginia voted to replace it with a statue of Barbara Rose Johns (1935-1991), a Black Civil Right leader. Her statue is now being created and has not yet been installed.
When the Arkansas state legislature was voting to replace their two statues in recent years they also nominated Walmart founder Sam Walton but chose Cash instead.
As authentic of an American as you can find
Cash sold over 90 million records during his career and was known both for his early years of “outlaw” behavior and his later years of devotional Christianity. He performed many times for inmates in prisons including Folsom and San Quentin. And he also performed at The White House for at least three U.S. presidents.
Cash’s Arkansas sharecropper household was full of gospel music and Cash honed musical skills during a military stint in Germany in the early 1950s. When he returned stateside he became part of the birth of “rockabilly” music at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee where he shared studio time with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and others.
His long musical career had many “downs” and late career “ups.” His problem with pills and other drugs marred his mid-career until his marriage to June Carter, of the fabled Carter Family, in 1968. Quite literally, as well as spiritually, and with full love and devotion, June Carter was Cash’s savior. (See the 2005 Oscar-winning movie starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, “I Walk the Line” for confirming evidence.)
Cash had his own Nashville-based TV variety show from 1969 to 1971 where he often booked very “non-Nashville” guests including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Arlo Guthrie. During this time, Cash had become a very vocal critic of the Vietnam War.
The Man in Black was always a man determined to be no one other than his true, authentic self. Whether paying tribute to his poor sharecropping days, his multiple run-ins with drug enforcement, his headline shows on the Grand Ole’ Opry or his latter studio years as a singer devoted almost exclusively to “redemption songs,” what you got was truth.
Cash received numerous Country Music and Grammy awards and is a member of both the Country Music and Gospel Music Halls of Fame. In 1996 he received the Kennedy Center Honors and is also in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Upon his death in 2003, his very close friend Bob Dylan wrote: “He is what the land and country are all about, the heart and soul of it personified and what it means to be here; and he said it all in plain English. … He was blessed with a profound gift to express all the various lost causes of the human soul. This is a miraculous and humbling thing.”
At the recent statue unveiling and ceremony his daughter Roseanne Cash said of her father: “He was a flawed but profoundly humble, kind and compassionate man with a magnificent generosity of spirit. He loved those who suffered because he knew great suffering and loss. 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.”
There were almost 100 relatives of Cash’s at the U.S. Capitol ceremony, including his sister Joanne who grew up in the same rural Arkansas sharecropper’s cabin as her famous brother.
California’s controversy
While several former Confederate states continue to debate replacement of some statues with troubled pro-slavery backgrounds, the state of California has its own unique statue controversy.
Currently, the statues of former governor Ronald Reagan and Catholic Saint Junîpero Serra represent the Golden State. Reagan’s statue was dedicated and placed in the Hall in 2009, replacing one of Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister who was a strong proponent of the Union during the Civil War and has been credited with helping to prevent California from becoming its own republic. He died in San Francisco in 1864 at the age of 39.
The controversy swirls around Father Serra whose critics charge him with genocide of Native Americans as he expanded the Spanish Missions in the California territory. His statue was almost removed in 2015 until Pope Francis caught the ear of then-Gov. Jerry Brown who halted the state legislature’s efforts.
National Statuary Hall history could have been made because a leading candidate to replace the Serra statue was one of astronaut Sally Ride. It would have been the Hall’s first statue to honor a known gay or lesbian.
The Serra controversy is not over. Three years ago, protestors toppled a statue of Father Serra outside the California Capitol building in Sacramento and Gov. Gavin Newsom had it replaced with a statue honoring California’s native people. Who said silent stone statues can’t have interesting lives? Stay tuned.
In all, there are 12 statues of women in the U.S. Capitol’s Hall collection, including one of Montana’s Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. Aviator Amelia Earhart, novelist Willa Cather, Native American Mother Joseph of Washington and also Sacagawea, who scouted for the Lewis and Clark expedition as a teen-ager in 1804, have statues in the Hall.
In 1905, the first woman honored was Frances Willard, an early suffragist and Christian Temperance Union leader from Illinois. Harriet Tubman, the famous abolitionist of the Underground Railroad days is not in the Hall, although the Maryland legislature tried to replace a statue of John Hanson, the first president of the Continental Congress, with one of her.
What future statues should we expect?
There are three or four in-process moves to replace or add statues to the National Statuary Hall collection. Utah, Virginia and Washington have commissioned new statues while California (see above), Maryland (also see above) and New Jersey are still in debate over possible replacement statues.
If it were left up to you, what statues would you like see mounted under the dome of the U.S. Capitol? You could make up your own criteria or try to follow the original intent to honor men and women who have made an historic contribution to the founding and strengthening of America. Maybe you could look for people who have “made America great again.”
We’re almost positive that Johnny Cash’s statue will soon have company from one or more fellow musicians, artists or a popular entertainer. Charlie Chaplin was born in England, but how about silent film pioneer Buster Keaton who was born in Kansas in 1895. He helped invent America’s film industry.
Why hasn’t Louisiana commissioned a statue of New Orleans’ jazz giant Louis Armstrong yet? They could get rid of the statue of Louisiana-born Supreme Court Justice Edward Douglass White Jr. who supported the legality of individual states’ rights to segregate citizens based on race. He fought for the Confederacy.
Perhaps other American entertainers deserving a U.S. Capitol statue might include Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, John Wayne (born in Iowa), and Katherine Hepburn or, well, it’s an exhausting list.
We can see a day soon when partisan politics will enter the selection of future statues. Although Black Americans Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass already have statues in the U.S. Capitol, we can’t image one for Malcolm X getting approval anytime soon.
Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater are already bronzed in the selection, but we can see liberals and partisan Democrats blocking any choice for a Rush Limbaugh statue, no matter how silent it would remain.
But we now have a Johnny Cash statue and we salute it is a symbol of “redemption” for all of America.
As Johnny wrote in his own song “Redemption,” we close with his words: “Between heaven and hell; A teardrop fell; In the deep crimson dew; The tree of life grew.”
— Rollie Atkinson
9-30-2024
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