In the early morning hours of May 11, 1965, Johnny Cash was arrested for public drunkenness after he was found picking flowers on this site following a show at Mississippi State University the previous evening. He spent the night at the Oktibbeha County Jail and later memorialized the incident in “Starkville City Jail,” most famously performed at another correctional institution and captured on his 1969 album Live at San Quentin. Born in Kingsland, Arkansas, on February 26, 1932, and raised in the Dyess Colony, a Depression-era federal project for cotton farmers, Cash developed his musical skills while serving in the Air Force in Germany as a radio intercept operator. After his discharge he settled in Memphis, where he created his signature sound with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant, then began touring widely in 1955 after successful Sun Records singles and built a reputation with #1 hits including “I Walk the Line,” “Guess Things Happen That Way,” and “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.” A regular visitor to Mississippi, he played the Jimmie Rodgers Festival in 1957 and 1959, and his hit-making streak continued through 1965, when his arrest after the Mississippi State show drew national attention. He posted bond, appeared in court, and performed the next day at the University of Mississippi. Cash’s rebellious nature was expressed through advocacy for the underdog, an independent stance in the music industry, and, for a time, his personal behavior, and he later reflected, “There is that beast there in me, and I got to keep him caged, or he’ll eat me alive,” when the success of American Recordings revived his career in 1994. He recorded many songs about incarceration, including “Folsom Prison Blues,” “In the Jailhouse Now,” “I Got Stripes,” “Austin Prison,” “San Quentin,” “Starkville City Jail,” and “There Ain’t No Good Chain Gang,” and he also advocated for prisoners’ rights in song, in prison performances, and in public life, including a 1972 testimony before Congress on prison reform and meetings with multiple presidents.
