The area around Kingsland in Cleveland County was a desperately poor part of Arkansas in February 1932 when J.R. Cash was born to Ray and Carrie Cash.
The Great Depression had begun in 1929, making the already cash-strapped state even poorer. Cotton fueled the Arkansas economy, and the Great Drought of 1930-31 decimated crops and left thousands of people bankrupt. Hunger was not unheard of in these pine woods.
Almost two decades earlier (in September 1913, to be exact), Paul William Bryant had been born nearby to farmer William Monroe Bryant and homemaker Dora Ida Kilgore Bryant. Paul was the eighth child of nine survivors. Three other children died at birth. Their home was in the Moro Creek bottoms, and the Bryants lived in even greater poverty than the Cash family.
Due to his father's bad health and a lack of food in the house, Paul often lived with his grandfather W.L. Kilgore in Fordyce. It was at Fordyce that he entered a contest at a downtown theater that promised a dollar to anyone who would wrestle a bear. It was then that folks started calling the teenager Bear Bryant.
Bryant discovered football at Fordyce. In 1926, he played in the first game he ever saw. He had cleats screwed into the only pair of shoes he owned and wore them everywhere. Bryant starred on an undefeated Redbug team in 1930 that was declared state champion by the Little Rock newspapers.
In 1931, University of Alabama assistant football coach Hank Crisp came to Fordyce to try to sign two players--the Jordan twins--who instead opted to go to the University of Arkansas. He left with Bryant.
By the time J.R. Cash was born in 1932, Bryant was a local hero and living in Tuscaloosa. In the fall of 1933, the first year of the Southeastern Conference, he helped the Crimson Tide to the initial SEC championship.
Cleveland County was called Dorsey County when it was created by the Arkansas Legislature in 1873. The railroad that would become known as the Cotton Belt was built across the county in 1882. That led to growth of the timber industry as it became far easier to ship out virgin timber. About 75 people lived near a railway station when Austin Gresham applied for a post office in December 1882.
"His first selected name for the post office, Arkatha, was refused by postal officials," Steve Teske writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "So was his second choice, Cohassett. Kingsland was his third choice, and it was approved in June 1883. The city was incorporated in 1884. At the time, it contained three steam-operated sawmills, a planing mill, several stores, two hotels, a druggist, a livery stable and a blacksmith.
"A Methodist church was begun in 1884, followed by two Baptist churches the following year. The first school classes met in the Methodist church in 1889. Kingsland had nine sawmills by then. . . . The Cleveland County Bank opened in Kingsland in 1899, and a brick factory was erected in 1900."
The timber industry suffered alongside the cotton sector during the Great Depression. In 1933, the Cash family was chosen to move to a New Deal resettlement colony for impoverished farmers known as Dyess. It was at that government project in faraway Mississippi County that young J.R. was introduced to the guitar by his mother and to music by the Church of God. He first sang on the radio at KLCN-AM in Blytheville while attending Dyess High School.
It's one of those accidents of history that two iconic figures in 20th-century American popular culture--Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant in the realm of sports and Johnny Cash in the music industry-- were born a few miles from each other in south Arkansas. On this day, I'm sitting with Wayne Cash (a distant cousin of Johnny Cash) in the building that once housed Kingsland High School.
Wayne, who lives at Woodlawn, has long been involved in the Cleveland County Historical Association. He loves what Arkansas State University has done in restoring the Johnny Cash boyhood home and parts of the former Dyess Colony in northeast Arkansas, but he wants to promote the Kingsland connection. And he has just the facility: a relatively new school building that will become Kingsland Heritage Center.
The New Edinburg School District was consolidated into the Kingsland School District in 1985. A 1940s school building at Kingsland was destroyed by fire in 2003. The new facility opened in 2005. A November 2002 ruling from the Arkansas Supreme Court that declared the state's system for funding public schools unconstitutional led to widespread consolidation during the remainder of the decade. The Kingsland School District was consolidated with Rison. Kingsland High School held its last classes in the spring of 2005.
Southeast Arkansas College, a two-year school based at Pine Bluff, uses part of the building as a satellite campus. A Head Start program for children is located in another part of the building. Still, there's plenty of room to make Wayne Cash's dream come true.
"We've been working on this for years," he says.
The John R. Cash Revocable Trust worked with Southeast Arkansas College on an agreement to use a portion of the building. Memorabilia will be housed there, and college students will be used for tasks such as building a website. Wayne hopes the Kingsland site will focus on the Cash family history in Cleveland County as well as Johnny Cash's many visits there.
A six-panel display commissioned by the Arkansas Humanities Council for a traveling exhibit is already set up. AHC donated the panel in 2017. And, yes, the school trophy cases still celebrate Bear Bryant.
According to an extensive master plan that was developed for Kingsland Heritage Center: "The center will include on-site staff, parking, an impressive indoor and outdoor exhibitory, and a regular program schedule of historic films, storytelling events, concerts and festivals. ... The KHC will showcase the influences for Johnny Cash's musical storytelling, his more than 50 performances across Arkansas, and impacts on Arkansas and its culture.
"To anchor the Kingsland and Arkansas concert histories with the broad interpretation and celebration of Johnny Cash's impact on the global music industry, the KHC will partner with John R. Cash Revocable Trust, the Cash boyhood interpretive site in Dyess and the Cash museum in Nashville."
Ken Hubbell, a consultant based in Little Rock, and noted architect Ed Levy of Little Rock are involved in the planning. Levy focuses on design concepts for the center while Hubbell is developing content.
Johnny Cash's first Arkansas concert was Aug. 3, 1955, at Little Rock's Robinson Auditorium along with a fellow named Elvis Presley. His final Arkansas concert was June 13, 1996, at Little Rock's Wildwood Park for the Arts. Cash died in September 2003.
According to Josh Matas of Sandbox Management, which represents the John R. Cash Revocable Trust: "The Kingsland Heritage Center will continue the commitment of the Cash family, along with the trust, of recognizing critical Cash locations in the state of Arkansas. Johnny Cash continues to thrive through the lens of popular culture."
Cash was featured throughout documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' series on country music and was the subject of a YouTube documentary titled "The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash." The video, released last year, has had more than 2.5 million views.
"Fans continue to identify with Cash, given his unwavering commitment to individuality and authenticity," Matas says.
Wayne Cash believes Johnny Cash fans will find their way to Kingsland. He has overseen the placement of markers throughout the county and is developing a Johnny Cash driving tour.
It appears that those visiting Dyess in the flat fields of northeast Arkansas will soon have a complementary attraction in the piney woods of what folks from the south half of the state call Lower Arkansas.
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.