Statues of music legend Johnny Cash and civil rights figure Daisy Lee Gatson Bates will be erected in the hallways of the U.S. Capitol, replacing the likenesses of two controversial Civil War figures.

Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson last week signed a measure to replace the statues of Uriah Milton Rose and James P. Clarke with those of Cash and Bates.

Rose and Clarke were both figures from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Rose was an attorney who supported the Confederacy and Clarke was a U.S. senator and governor of the state who held racist views, according to Roll Call.

Members of Congress have campaigned to remove Confederate statues and artwork from the Capitol, though the choice of statues on display is up to individual states: each state gifts two statues of their choice to the collection.

The replacement of the Rose and Clarke statues was not solely because of their status as Confederate figures.

Arkansas state Sen. David Wallace, the lead sponsor of the measure to replace the likenesses, said it was time to erect statues of people with more current name recognition.

"The statues there in the hall now are of two fine gentlemen, but they are of a different era," Wallace said, according to Roll Call. "I remember when I came back from Vietnam and I went to the hall, then I saw all these great men, and then I went in front of the Arkansas statutes and I didn't know who they were. That's nothing against them, but their time has faded."

Others, however, have cheered the swap because of the figures' Confederate ties.

The state Senate chose Cash and Bates – two prominent albeit very different figures – as the replacements.

Bates held numerous positions of leadership in the civil rights movement in Arkansas, including as the president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Bates selected and organized the Little Rock Nine, a group of black students who famously integrated an all-white high school in 1957 after the Supreme Court found segregated schools unconstitutional.

Cash, also an Arkansas native, is one of the best-selling artists of all time.

