Civil rights leader Daisy Bates statue unveiled at U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON >> The late U.S. civil rights leader and journalist Daisy Bates, who was instrumental in desegregating Arkansas public schools in the 1950s, was honored with a statue of her that was unveiled on Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol.

The bronze statue depicts Bates, who died in 1999 at the age of 84, with a newspaper in one hand and a notebook and pen in the other. It will be joined later this year by another Arkansas entry, honoring the late singer Johnny Cash, according to the office of House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.

When a black veil was pulled off the Bates statue, it faced another U.S. civil rights icon, Rosa Parks at the other end of Statuary Hall.

Bates and her husband together published an Arkansas newspaper dedicated to the civil rights cause. She also served as the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP.

The U.S. Capitol allows each of the 50 states to choose two statues for the National Statuary Hall and surrounding prominent hallways. Arkansas’ state legislature in 2019 decided to replace both of its entries.

They were Uriah Rose, a mid-1800s Little Rock attorney who was a Confederate sympathizer and a founder of the American Bar Association, and James Clarke, a late 1800s governor, who later became a U.S. senator and was a defender of white supremacy.

Dozens of statues, monuments and buildings honoring U.S. historical leaders who carried out policies viewed as racist have been removed or renamed in recent years.

Bates’ statue will join those including Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, aviator Amelia Earhart of Kansas, inventor Thomas Edison of Ohio and Chief Standing Bear, a central figure in an 1879 court case establishing Native Americans as “persons” under the law.

And, of course, George Washington of Virginia.

Cash, who died in 2003 at the age of 71, was known as the “Man in Black” for the clothing he wore on stage. His most famous songs over a long career include “Ring of Fire,” “A Boy Named Sue” and “I Walk the Line.”

His statue depicts him with a guitar slung over his back and a Bible in hand.