Civil Rights

Ballads of the American Indian is a concept album and nineteenth album released by country singer Johnny Cash in 1964 on Columbia Records. It is one of several Americana records by Cash; as its title implies, the tracks on the album focus exclusively on the history of and problems facing Native Americans in the United States. Cash had been convinced that his ancestry included members of the Cherokee tribe, and this partly served as inspiration for recording Bitter Tears. Throughout the album, Cash concentrates on the harsh and unfair treatment of the indigenous peoples of North America.

The songs were written in part by Cash himself and in part by Peter La Farge, with the final track credited to Cash and Johnny Horton. The first song, "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow", concerns the loss of Seneca nation land in Pennsylvania due to the construction of the Kinzua Dam in the early 1960s. Cash rerecorded it decades later and released it on Unearthed with the lyrics altered to describe his relationship with and devotion to June Carter Cash; the track itself was a duet with the latter. The one single from Bitter Tears that was released was "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", which reached No. 3 on the Country charts; the song tells the story of Ira Hayes, a young Marine of Native American descent who participated in the flag raising on Iwo Jima and became an instant celebrity, only to die drunk and in poverty on the Gila River Reservation where he was born.

The story of Cash and "Ira Hayes" began a decade before the meeting with Nixon. On the night of May 10, 1962, Cash made a much-anticipated New York debut at Carnegie Hall. But instead of impressing the cognoscenti, Cash, who had begun struggling with drug addiction, ...