A Statue Of Johnny Cash Is Being Added To The US Capitol Next Month

If you ask me, our government could learn a thing or two from Johnny Cash.

The Man In Black is one of the most famous people to come out of Arkansas (aside from maybe Slick Willy), having been born into a family of poor cotton farmers in Kingsland, Arkansas before his family moved to the New Deal colony of Dyess during the Great Depression.

As a teenager, Cash would often sing on his local radio station, but after graduation he enlisted in the US Air Force and served as a radio operator in West Germany intercepting Soviet transmissions (a position where he became the first American to learn of Joseph Stalin’s death – wild but true story).

After returning home, Cash married his first wife Vivian Liberto and moved to Memphis, where he would make his first recordings at Sun Records. And well, the rest is history.

Cash would go on to be one of the most legendary artists in country music, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, and would eventually marry into the “First Family of Country Music” with his second marriage to his longtime wife, June Carter Cash.

And next month, he’ll officially be representing his home state in our nation’s capital.

Back in 2019, then-Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson announced that a statue of Cash would be added to the National Statuary Hall Collection, which is located in the US Capitol and features two statues from each state to honor notable natives.

The statue of Cash will be replacing the current statue of James P. Clarke, a former Arkansas governor and US Senator whose statue has been in the Capitol Visitors Center since 1921. But Clarke was a notable supporter of white supremacy, and even his great-great-grandson, an Arkansas state senator, called for the statue to be removed over Clarke’s racist beliefs.

It’s only fitting that Johnny Cash will be honored in the halls of Congress, and it was announced today that the statue would be dedicated at a ceremony at the capitol on September 24.

Maybe our government will be able to get their shit together when they have to walk by the Man In Black every day.