Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

And hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for joining us.

Our focus this week actually is a return to a subject that we initially covered earlier this year.

Arkansas is two contributors to the statuary in the U.S. Capitol in the spring, you'll recall, a statue of Arkansas civil rights leader Daisy Bates was dedicated in a ceremony featuring Speaker Mike Johnson.

In a moment, we'll add to our coverage of that event by speaking with a close associate of Daisy Bates.

But first, the other piece of statuary, now in bronze is the man in black, Johnny Cash.

Only days ago, a sendoff ceremony was held as the finished likeness of Johnny Cash was trucked to Washington for the official unveiling, which will be Tuesday, September 24th.

Back with us again.

Shayne Broadway, chair of Arkansas's National Statuary Hall Steering Committee and the artist who crafted that likeness, sculptor Kevin Cressey.

Before we begin, though, some reflections on the selection of Johnny Cash and his Arkansas companion in bronze from Johnny Cash's daughter, Rosanne.

When we heard the dad and Daisy Bates were going to be the two people to represent Arkansas, I, I, we could we could hardly take it in.

Like there's going to be 100 people representing 50 states.

And dad is one of those slate better than a Grammy.

I mean, I honestly think of all of the awards and recognitions and halls of fame and accolades he received in his life, that this this is the one just chain Broadway high praise.

Congratulations to both of you.

Thank you very much.

It's from from inspiration to Inception to authorization, funding and completion.

A half to five years.

Five years?

Yeah, we've been we've been at it five years.

And to hear Rosanne say that she had told her manager told me after that interview that she had commented to him that this was the most significant thing in her father's life.

And that is huge.

So, so, so big.

So to be involved in something like this has been a true honor of both Daisy Bates and Johnny Cash to to be involved in this process, to work with two magnificent artists throughout this process.

And everyone who's been involved.

We've got a whole team of people behind the scenes that without we wouldn't be where we are right now.

Right.

And let's take just a second, if we may, to to update exactly what led to the replacement of the two of us.

Every state gets two statues.

Every state has to.

I was a tour guide 30 years ago when I was an intern for Senator David Pryor.

And so I used to talk about the other the two that were there for over 100 years.

I think it really began with some legislators who were taking a state legislators who were taking a night tour of the Capitol and a very Rose and James Clark.

And really they did not know a whole lot about them and wondered what the process was, maybe about changing hours because some states were already in that process of changing their Kansas and Florida updating.

And so they came back, I think, from that tour and started that conversation.

And it began with a bill filed in 2019 by Senator Dave Wallace, who came to me and said, I want to include Johnny Cash.

I work with the university that obviously owns the Arkansas State University, owns the Johnny Cash boyhood home in Dallas, and said he asked if I would check with the family to make sure they would be okay.

Obviously, you know the answer.

And so that's really how the process began.

The legislature decides which to will represent their state in the United States Capitol.

And like she said, there's a hundred of them.

Each state gets two and two.

The artist.

Well, it wasn't a cut and dried thing that this would be an Arkansas art.

A Kevin Crowley was not necessarily from the start.

No, we did we did an RFQ nationwide in there and had I mean, just a magnificent artist who he'll tell he knows it's every one of them that applied.

And we narrowed it down and went through the process.

And what I always say is Kevin won the commission the morning that we did the presentation, once we narrowed it down to three finalists for both statues and Kevin walks in, we're in the governor's conference room.

We're still separated out because it was still the era of COVID.

So we're all separated out in the governor's conference room.

And Kevin walks in with everything, had a sheet over it covered, had it covered.

And so we're all kind of looking at each other.

This is the clay model, which is this is the clay model.

And so all of us who are on the selection committee are all looking there because everyone else just walked in with it uncovered.

Kim walks in with it covered.

And so we're like, okay, this is interesting.

And what he does and what he did and what you'll see throughout the statue is he had done his homework.

He had read everything about Johnny Cash he could read.

He knew everything about Johnny Cash he could ever imagine.

And he starts telling a story.

So instead of showing the piece right off the gate, right out of the gate, he starts telling a story about Johnny Cash and what led him to what we were about to see.

And so he tells this magnificent story and his own personal story intertwined into it and then unveils it just like we'll do at the Capitol in a couple of weeks as force.

And we all we all sit there and look at each other.

And I remember looking Beth Guy, who's has an art gallery in Hot Springs, we both automatically look at each other and we're like, Oh my God, that's Johnny Cash.

There was no doubt when you saw that and based on Kevin's presentation and what he did, I knew that that minute he was going to get the connection.

Yeah, that's seal the deal.

Well, it is my function to gush and I don't.

But to the audience for what little that is visible of this statue.

You nailed Johnny Cash.

Did you, as an artist, did you become Johnny Cash?

Well.

Oh, you do.

You do have to inhabit the subject.

You have to know so much about it because you're making thousands and thousands of tiny decisions along the way.

So you need to know automatically, does this feel right or not?

Because otherwise it'll take several lifetimes to get anything finished.

So that's why I do all the research.

I had a leg up because in 2016 I received a commission to do the great musician Levon Helm from Turkey Scratch and driving back from the Delta, I'm a frustrated musician myself.

I thought of all the influential musicians that came particularly from the Arkansas Delta.

So I started on my own with the whole project to build it and hopefully they will come and I'll find funding of Best of these musicians.

So I did Al Green.

I did a 1960s, early 1960s.

Johnny Cash did Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Glen Campbell started on Louis Jordan when when the DC projects started coming up.

So then I really went in on the deep dive on Johnny.

We're talking here about differences and.

MM.

On the length of, of the front coat and the hair and the way it's combed and everything.

Right, right, right, right now.

But you consulted on a constant basis, correct me if I'm wrong with the Cash family, correct.

I always said if I can make the family happy, everybody's going to be happy because no one knows him better.

And so with a sculpture trying to sum up someone's life in a frozen pose, you can't have excess anything.

I mean, it's got to be distilled down to the person.

And it can be frustrating because he had a wonderful sense of humor, you know, And I couldn't you know, you can't quite get everything in there, but you want that timeless qualities to come forth.

And the humanity.

To me, he wasn't chosen to be representing Arkansas in the Statuary Hall Collection because of the number of records he sold or all the accolades he got as a musician.

To me, it was his fact that he took everything that he garnered through his success.

And instead of holding on to it tightly, he used it to shine a light and raise up others who have been stepped over, forgotten.

And he was just that's just part of who he was.

And that's the aspect of Johnny Cash that I really wanted to highlight.

Let's pause for a second and hear some more from Rosanne Cash.

Now, we weren't allowed to choose it, the family, but we were allowed to weigh in and just, you know, give our opinions.

And I think that all of us, when we saw Kevin's rendering, we were like, this guy get to Dad is.

And then he was chosen and it was really exciting.

We were thrilled he was chosen.

And then, you know, and then it took quite a long time over years.

So he asked our advice.

The family, you know, was his chin.

Is this the very correct angle of his chin?

Is this exactly how long his fingers were?

You know, would he have looked this way?

Would is his chest a little too heavy?

There were really specific questions he asked and we gave really specific answers.

And it was it was very moving to go into that detailed description of our dad.

You know, his fingers looked like this.

He would keep his head cocked at this angle.

It was it was a beautiful experience that went over a few years.

And then when we saw it, it was chilling, beautiful, moving and unsettling in a way like this.

This does have the essence of dad in it.

I think she likes it.

Well, that's the first time I've seen that.

That's well, very moving to me.

But back to the calculations and all that.

What I saw and in what I have seen of the work, Kevin and Johnny in the face, there is there is some joy, but there is also struggle and pain and and turmoil.

Yes, exactly.

How do you get that when you chase your tail a lot?

Because one little thing has a domino effect on everything else from another angle that can affect something you're not even seeing.

So you're constantly moving around.

The one thing I did do and I told them at the capital when I was one of the finalists, is that it helps me to have a story in my mind that I refer to that helps me see if I'm on track or not.

And so interrupted.

You have Cash's music playing in the studio.

You do it?

Sure.

I did a lot and I did a lot of talking and stuff.

So the idea for me was is that he's going back to his childhood home where they would have concerts next, next to the house at the Heritage Fest and Johnny Cash Heritage Festival.

So that was the idea that I had was he's going through the restored home, that is you completely restored for the first time.

He's reliving all those memories.

He's getting ready to go play, take those few steps over, and he's come out onto the porch.

He's looking out over the fields and he's thinking about his brother Jack that was tragically killed.

That was his.

See all of those memories of his family working the fields, the success, how far he's come, all of it.

He's doing a live review on his porch before he goes in.

So that if I had that in mind, then I would always go, yes, No, Yes, no.

As I'm moving along, going, This feels right.

This doesn't feel right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To both of you.

There, there.

Daisy Bates and Johnny Cash has some things in common.

A lot of things in a lot of that.

They were, I guess you could say.

At one level, they were soulmates.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's the family is really talked about that a lot in terms of their lives and, you know, their work in terms of advocacy for justice, for helping those who are less fortunate, just their life story of where they came from and kind of where where they ended up.

And so it's really been an amazing journey being part of both of these and especially, you know, Johnny's going to be the first musician to be in the US capital.

But but the synergy between he and Daisy and their stories and everything else has really been, I think, a unique aspect to this that really at first we didn't we really didn't think about.

Yeah, struck girl is what Yeah they had that in common Kevin trust Yeah that comes out in the art I guess.

Yeah.

I found it interesting with Daisy and Johnny because it's one of those things that if both of them had grown up to be bitter adults, it would be understandable that both of them turn that into an altruistic act towards others.

And that's what I find beautiful about the two of them.

Yeah.

Would you do anything differently on on this?

I mean, in retrospect, looking at you started in clay announcing bronze, would you?

Well, it's interesting, Nick.

You want to pick in your own as an artist.

That's all you can see.

Or the things that drive you crazy.

I was we had it out of the crate here recently was the first time I had seen it in a while, and I have to say I was happy with it, which made me happy.

There's also the for one time I saw it up on the pedestal, and when it goes up those three feet psychologically, it changes.

And you envision these things in your head, but you never know until you see it in person if it's working like you envisioned it.

And it it worked like I envisioned it.

Yeah.

One quick story I'll share about it.

Kevin was doing kind of a residency over at Wingate Art Center at UCLA, and I went by the scene and I could tell something wasn't right.

We were.

We were trying to move the process along, keep everybody going.

I'm trying to do this, you know, as quickly as we could.

But I didn't want to rush the artist, you know?

But.

But I could tell he he wasn't comfortable with where Johnny was.

And he just had a frank conversation with me and said, I need more time.

I need I need to to look at this and study it and figure out it's not what I want it to be.

A said Kevin at this statue is at least going to be in that catalog for a century.

So I want it to be right and I want you to not have any regrets.

And so he took a few more weeks and that's where he nailed it.

Time well spent.

Gentlemen, congratulations to both of you.

And thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate the appreciation and we'll be right back with more.

We're back.

And as we noted up top, the Johnny Cash ceremony follows the dedication last May of the statue of Daisy Gaston Bates, the spiritual godmother, if you will, of the Little Rock Nine, those intrepid youngsters who braved mobs and entirely too much of the establishment to integrate Central High School in 1957.

In our broadcast, just prior to that event, we had planned to have our next guest, but illness intervened.

Janice Kearney is all well now and with us.

She worked at Mrs. Bates newspaper before eventually becoming its owner, Janice Kearney.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

What would Ms.. You worked intimately with Mrs. Bates for a long time.

What would she think of this?

What would she make of this?

She would be so excited, so honored.

And she'd probably say, I deserve it because I gave my life.

I gave my life.

And so did my husband.

And we worked really hard to make Arkansas better.

So it's a deserving honor.

Yeah.

Did.

Was she bitter?

I didn't think she was bitter, but she was still she was still believing that Arkansas could do better.

She she still thought we weren't where we should have been.

After all the work that had been put into integrating the schools.

Right now, she and a lot of people have seen, including me and our previous guest, have seen what seem to us obvious similarities in the life of Johnny Cash and the life of Daisy Bates.

Mm hmm.

I agree.

I agree.

And I've I think I told someone on the committee that they are both kind of before their time, both kind of outcasts in a way.

And they both believed in democracy before we started talking about democracy.

The way that we talk about it today.

They believed that everybody deserved a chance, equal opportunity.

They believed in a lot of things.

You know, similarly.

Yeah.

And what they had in common, it strikes me, too, is struggle.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

From the start.

Yes, yes, yes.

She different struggles, but definitely struggles.

She was an orphan that was left on the doorstep of friends, and they took her in and raised her.

Never adopted her officially, but raised her.

And she learned that she was an orphan.

She learned what happened to her mother.

She learned that she was considered a black girl with little, you know, worth.

And a lot of that had to do with who she became.

Learning that and finding a way to do something with all that bitterness at that point and do something positive with it.

You got all of the words, yes, I can.

Yes, I can.

Yeah.

And a lot of that credit also does her husband and we don't talk enough about Elsie, Elsie Bates, but definitely she was like she learned from him a lot of her belief in civil rights and the way that you make it work.

Yeah.

And it's worth discussing, I guess they had an unusual relationship, too.

Yeah, they did.

Elsie Bates was 29 years old when he fell in love with this 15 year old girl.

He was a an insurance salesman who came to Haddock and sold insurance to her father, her adopted father.

And in the meantime, the father was like Elsie.

They were both civil rights men, race man, as they call them.

Back then they would talk race issues and Daisy would be right there in the middle, listening and learning.

And she in turn fell in love with Elsie, and they left after the father died.

Two years later, they left heartache and went to Memphis, Tennessee.

Yeah.

Now they separate.

After marrying, they separated, I think, even divorced and then reunited.

They did.

They did.

So, yeah, I mean, she would never call herself a perfect human being, but she was a woman with a lot of passion.

And she believed in right as far as children, as far as people who didn't have a voice of their own.

She had a voice.

And she used her voice.

And her husband used his voice through writing, through the newspaper.

Did she ever talk about was she afraid?

She got afraid when she found out just how desperate a lot of the white people were not to integrate that school because she was threatened.

And of course, we know that her home was they were harassed at their home.

Well, a bomb went off.

A bomb was.

Yeah, Yeah.

Set fire to all of that.

Yeah.

Eventually she was afraid, but it didn't.

She didn't back down.

She kept moving forward.

I heard her say once I one of the interviews that I did with Mrs. Bates, whenever.

Mm hmm.

And.

And.

And I ask her to contemplate, to ruminate, if she would.

On on the matter of courage.

The subject of courage.

And I was struck by her reply, which was very brief.

Mm hmm.

She said, You've either got it or you don't.

Well.

Well, I knew she had it.

She had?

Yeah.

And her husband had it to do what they did in spite of all the people that were against what she was doing, in spite of a lot of the people in her own community who did not back her.

She kept going because she knew it was the right thing.

And that's a part of the story.

That's to, I suppose, too seldom addressed, and that's the division within the African-American community.

There was a substantial number of people who, as you just said, leave it alone.

Leave it as let us live.

But not only that, leave it alone.

But also you aren't the right person to do this because she was a woman.

She was a relatively young woman.

She was not a Little Rock native.

She and her husband had come from somewhere else.

Where else?

So a lot of people looked at them as outsiders and they believed that a man should be doing it.

That's the world we were living in at that time.

And there was no opposition from the clerical community as well within the African-American.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that was that's some of the more conservative community part of the community.

So, yeah, they felt like if we're going to do this, it should be a man of stature that that is doing this.

You shouldn't be leading this.

Yeah, there was the gender issue as well that what she left behind.

A substantial archive.

If students went in with not only the newspaper but her papers, her papers that she had accumulated over the years.

If we were to go, a student would were to go into those papers, and they're basically in two locations.

Okay?

Mm hmm.

If a student were to go and just delve, jump into those papers and just spend however much stuff, what would he or she learn?

What would they find?

Although they would learn a lot about her after she became a leader in the civil rights struggle.

They wouldn't learn too much about her before then.

That takes a lot more research because the papers don't have that much about her early life.

You know, unfortunately, it's what was kept after she started running the newspaper and then she was elected as the ACP president, and then she became head of the the died for the Little Rock nine.

Yeah, that was pretty moving moment.

And I wasn't there, but I watched it on television, a pretty moving ceremony in D.C. when that statue was unveiled.

It was amazing.

It was simply amazing.

I don't I'm not sure most people from Arkansas were touched.

They couldn't believe that it was happening because Arkansas has its history.

But I think what Arkansas showed is that we can move beyond a lot of things that we went through historically and Bates was one of those people who could bring people together.

And she did in that instance.

She brought people there were there were unbelievable speeches made by people you wouldn't have believe speeches were made.

And it was just very, very touching.

But for for me, I always knew she deserved this kind of recognition.

And I was probably one of the happiest people in that room.

Janice Curry, thanks very much for being here.

We need to end that.

We should note that Arkansas PBS is producing a documentary film on the making of those two statues, Mrs. Bates and Johnny Cash.

And that documentary is expected to be released next year.

So, as we say, stay tuned.

Thanks again for watching, as always.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Arkansas Times and little Rock Public Radio.