Charley Pride Birthplace — Sledge, Mississippi

Charley Pride was born on March 18, 1934, in Sledge, Mississippi, in Quitman County, the fourth of eleven children of a sharecropper family. He became the first Black superstar of country music and one of the best-selling country artists of the 1970s, with 52 Top 10 hits and three Grammy Awards. Pride broke into the Nashville establishment at a time when country music was almost exclusively white, and his success — navigating overt racism and the industry's discomfort — is one of the more remarkable stories in American music.

Pride had dreamed first of being a professional baseball player and played in the Negro Leagues and in MLB's minor leagues before his music career took hold. He signed to RCA Victor in the late 1960s and his early singles were deliberately released without a photograph — his label feared that DJs would refuse to play his records if they knew he was Black. By the time audiences discovered the truth, his voice had already won them over. 'Kiss an Angel Good Mornin',' 'Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone,' and 'Crystal Chandeliers' are among his most enduring recordings.

Sledge is a small community in the northern Delta, in Quitman County near the Tennessee border. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker acknowledges Pride's birth here, though his music is country rather than blues — a reminder that the trail celebrates Mississippi's broader musical heritage. Pride died of COVID-19 complications in December 2020 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.