Johnny Cash, Prison Abolitionist
Cash would soon confront Nixon in person, too. In 1972, the president invited him to the White House and asked him to perform a few songs; he wanted to hear Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” and a novelty song called “Welfare Cadillac.” The first choice was an ironic one, since Haggard had been one of the prisoners in the audience at San Quentin when Cash played there in 1958. The fact that “Okie” existed was proof of the creative potential of the people right-wing politicians like Nixon wanted to keep locked away. Not only that, but Haggard had been serving a 15-year sentence for burglary, a crime Nixon would soon order to be committed himself. “Welfare Cadillac,” meanwhile, is a mean-spirited song about a scammer who buys a brand-new convertible with his government checks. “I don’t know those songs, but I got a few of my own I can play for you,” Cash reportedly said. It was almost certainly a lie. He knew Haggard personally, and was an obsessive student and archivist of country music, so it’s hard to believe he missed “Cadillac.” But before anyone could stop him, he instead played his classic “Man in Black.” The lyrics stabbed at Nixon twice: first over Vietnam (“I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have been / Each week we lose a hundred fine young men”), and then over imprisonment (“I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime / But who’s there because he's a victim of the times.”) The White House archives don’t record what Tricky Dick thought of this, but like the governor at Angola, he can’t have been thrilled.
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