LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A statue depicting Johnny Cash departed Arkansas for Washington on Thursday, as state officials gave the bronze figure a send-off toward its new home at the U.S. Capitol.
A small crowd that included members of Cash’s family gathered outside Arkansas’ Capitol to watch as the statue — safely enclosed in a wooden crate in the back of a tractor trailer — began its journey. The eight- foot-tall statue is scheduled to be unveiled at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 24.
“Today is the day we’re going to send Johnny to D.C.,” Shane Broadway, chairman of the Arkansas National Statuary Hall Steering Committee, said.
The Cash statue is the second new one Arkansas has sent to replace two existing ones representing the state at the U.S. Capitol. Another statue depicting civil rights leader Daisy Bates was unveiled at the Capitol earlier this year. Bates mentored the nine Black children who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
The two statues replace ones from Arkansas that had been at the Capitol for more than 100 years. The Legislature in 2019 voted to replace the two statues, which depicted little-known figures from the 18th and 19th centuries with Bates and Cash.