Among the white marble statesmen and bronze war heroes standing silent vigil in the halls of the Capitol, a musician arrived Tuesday. It was Johnny Cash, the “Man in Black” who made his fame by singing about and for outlaws and what love and cocaine can do to a man.

The bronze statue, by Arkansas-based sculptor Kevin Kresse, shows the young Cash looking thoughtfully at his feet as he walks forward. A guitar hangs on his back and his left hand rests on the strap, as if he had just walked onto the stage – possibly at San Quentin prison – to step up to the microphone, swing his six-string and start the show as he always did by saying, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

It complements the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection, but this man in bronze will not go the way that tour guides so often go. Instead, it will stay at the Capitol Visitor Center, near Philo T. Farnsworth of Utah, the “Father of Television.”

Arkansas remains represented in the old House chamber by another new statue, unveiled in May, of civil rights activist and Little Rock Nine organizer Daisy Bates. The pair replaced Arkansas’s previous two 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 condemned his virulently racist views.

The decision to replace them with Cash and Bates was made in 2019 when the Arkansas State Legislature passed a bill that was signed by then-Governor Asa Hutchinson.

According to spokesman Mike Johnson, Cash is the first professional musician to be memorialized in the Capitol. He is also believed to be the first man arrested for drug smuggling at the U.S.-Mexico border to receive this honor, although Johnson omitted this from his remarks.

Johnson noted, however, that more than 100 members of the Cash family were in attendance at the packed ceremony, including, as it turned out, himself.

“My staff did a genealogy report,” Johnson said. “I’m Johnny Cash’s fifth cousin.”

Cash’s Grammy-winning daughter Rosanne delivered a speech on behalf of the family. “Since his death, I have not put words in his mouth, but today I can say with certainty that of all the honors and recognition he received throughout his life, he feels this is the greatest,” she said.

“He was a flawed but deeply humble, kind and compassionate man with a great generosity who loved those who suffered because he knew great suffering and great loss,” she said. “He was passionate about prisoners’ rights, Native American rights, impoverished children and all those who struggled and whose prospects were bleak.”

During his closing blessing, Cash’s nephew Mike Garrett emphasized his uncle’s Christian faith. “I have received everything this world has to offer, and I have found only one thing that completely satisfies me,” the executive director of Christian Counseling Associates of Raleigh recalled Cash saying. “That is Jesus.”

Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack said he was a lifelong fan, so much so that he memorized the lyrics to “A Boy Named Sue” as a child. Womack turned to Kresse and then said, “Kevin, I can actually see ‘the gravel in his stomach and the drool in his eye,'” to paraphrase the song.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries praised Cash, citing 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. Over the course of a 50-year career, he released more than 90 albums. He sang about outlaws and farmers, soldiers and auto workers, lovers and con artists. He performed a number of concerts in prisons and recorded some of them on albums, such as “At Folsom Prison.”

He himself was arrested several times, often for his pill addiction, but managed to avoid a felony conviction. The arrest became the fodder for his outlaw country image and his songs about life in prison. He served in the Air Force but later became a pacifist, famously opposing the Vietnam War.

After the younger Cash’s remarks, the U.S. Air Force band played her father’s hit, “I Walk the Line.”