On January 7, 1967, something happened at the legendary Grand Ole Opry that many people in the audience would never forget, because for a few strange seconds the entire room seemed frozen in silence after Ernest Tubb introduced a young singer named Charley Pride, and what shocked the crowd was not just the voice they were about to hear, but the fact that a Black man was walking onto the most sacred stage in country music during a time when the American South was still deeply divided by race.
In the 1960s, country music was widely seen as a world belonging almost entirely to…
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