Music legend Johnny Cash will be immortalised with a statue in the US Capitol as his native state of Arkansas replaced divisive figures associated with white supremacy.
Each US state sends two sculptures to the Statuary Hall, a grand gallery leading to the Capitol's Rotunda, and the century-old representatives of Arkansas have become increasingly controversial amid 
Arkansas announced that one of its two statues - traditionally in white marble - would depict "Man in Black" Cash, whose songs of outlaws, prisoners and his own spiritual journey, sung in a forbidding baritone to a hard-edged country guitar, made him an icon across genres.
Country singer Johnny Cash in 1969. The Man in Black is set to have a statute dedicated to him in Washington. Source: AP
Cash, who died in 2003 in Nashville, will be joined in the Statuary Hall by Daisy Bates, a crusading African American civil rights journalist, after a vote by the Arkansas Senate.
Bates helped guide the Little Rock Nine, black students who defied threats and enrolled in an all-white school in the Arkansas capital in 1957 after president Dwight Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to enforce a Supreme Court decision.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signs a bill into law that replaces the states two statues with statues of civil rights leader Daisy Bates and Johnny Cash. Source: AP
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a conservative Republican, hailed Bates as an inspiration and called civil rights "an essential part of our story that says much about courage and who are as a state."
He did not directly disassociate Arkansas from the two existing figures honored at the Capitol but said in a weekly address, "Most everyone who was involved in the discussion agreed we
The statue of James Paul Clarke, a US senator and Arkansas governor who strongly pushed segregation, which is slated to be replaced. Source: Wikipedia
The statues to be removed depict James Paul Clarke, a US senator and Arkansas governor who strongly pushed segregation a century ago, and Uriah Rose, a lawyer who backed the Confederacy.
