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NEW: I knew Charley Pride was a trail blazer as the first Black country superstar. But until I started writing this after learning of his death from COVID-19 earlier today, I didn't realize how many incredible his life story was. Some things I learned: 1/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
Charley Pride was born in Sledge, Miss., in 1934—a town of fewer than 350 people. He walked four miles to a segregated grade school each day while white children passed on buses.
He bought his first guitar with money he earned picking cotton. 2/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
He bought his first guitar with money he earned picking cotton. 2/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
Charley Pride became a country radio star even as RCA released singles that didn't include photos of him.
So when he appeared before a crowd of 10,000 white fans in Detroit, their applause quickly turned to stunned silence upon realizing he was Black. 3/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
So when he appeared before a crowd of 10,000 white fans in Detroit, their applause quickly turned to stunned silence upon realizing he was Black. 3/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
“Friends, I realize it’s a little unique, me coming out here—with a permanent suntan—to sing country and western to you,” he told the stunend white audience who had just discovered his Blackness. “I am from Mississippi. ... And I sing country music." 4/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
When Charley Pride and his wife, Rozene Cochran, lived in Montana in the 1960s, racism still followed. Even as a rising star, the couple were refused service in a Helena restaurant and a real estate agent refused to show them a home. 5/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
Charley Pride's wife, Rozene, told a Helena newspaper that in Montana, Native Americans were "treated much like Negroes in the South."
A white neighbor who cuddled the Prides’ baby chased off a Native boy who came to play with their son, she said. 6/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
A white neighbor who cuddled the Prides’ baby chased off a Native boy who came to play with their son, she said. 6/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
Charlie Pride on performing in Texas the night of MLK's assassination: “I got onstage, nobody said nothin’. They applauded, I got a standing ovation. ... But it was hanging there, what had happened and me the only one there with these pigmentations." 7/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
In 1976, amid The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Charley Pride did what few international artists were willing to do: he performed in Belfast—despite the deadly violence in the country. His decision led other artists to break the de facto boycott, too. 8/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
Pride, the son of a state who just over a century earlier had seceded & gone to war against its union to keep people like him enslaved, temporarily united both sides of the Northern Ireland conflict in praise of him going where few other acts would go. 9/ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/7476/charley-pride-mississippi-born-country-trail-blazer-dies-of-covid-19/
"Roll on Mississippi, you make me feel like a child again
Roll on Mississippi, big river roll.
You’re the childhood dream that I grew up on.
Roll on Mississippi, carry me home.
Now I can see I’ve been away too long.
Roll on, Mississippi, roll on."
—Charley Pride, 1981
Roll on Mississippi, big river roll.
You’re the childhood dream that I grew up on.
Roll on Mississippi, carry me home.
Now I can see I’ve been away too long.
Roll on, Mississippi, roll on."
—Charley Pride, 1981
