The fourth of eleven children--eight boys and three girls--Pride grew up in a family headed by Mack and Tessie B. Stewart Pride. Pride's parents worked as sharecroppers and picked cotton. The family shared a three-room tin and cracked-wood "shotgun" house, so named because a person could "fire a shotgun through the front door and out the back without hitting anything."
Although the Pride family was poor, Pride's mother insisted there were people with a lot more money who would give millions for what her son had. She pointed out to him, as an example, that he had all of his fingers and both eyes.
Pride and his siblings suffered frequent beatings at the hands of their father, a stern disciplinarian. Said Pride, "He showed concern for his children by using the strap to keep us on a straight and narrow path and he showed tenderness by protecting us and caring for us. We all survived the hardships of our youth and turned out to be reasonably solid citizens."
Charley's father, Mack Pride, was a deacon in the Baptist church, but Pride later said that it was his mother who seemed the more spiritual of his parents.
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