Charley Pride

Charley Frank Pride (born March 18, 1938 in Sledge, Mississippi) is a former Negro League baseball player who became one of the only African Americans to have a successful career in modern country music.

Pride was one of

Charley Frank Pride (born March 18, 1938 in Sledge, Mississippi) is a former Negro League baseball player who became one of the only African Americans to have a successful career in modern country music.

Pride was one of eleven children born to desperately poor sharecroppers. His father named him Charl Frank Pride, but due to a typing error on his birth certificate, he was legally born as Charley Frank Pride. He grew up dreaming of being a baseball player and met his future wife, Rozene, while playing for the Memphis Red Sox in Memphis, Tennessee (which was a Negro-American League team). Pride played guitar and sang while touring as a baseball player.