Greenville: Ray Charles Grew Up Here

Greenville, Florida is a small Madison County town of fewer than a thousand people, but it shaped one of the most important musicians in American history. Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia in nineteen thirty, but his mother brought him to Greenville as an infant to be near family. He grew up here in the rural North Florida countryside.

Beginning around age four or five, he lost his eyesight, and by seven he was completely blind. He studied music at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in Saint Augustine. Greenville today honors his memory with a bronze statue in Haffye Hayes Park and his restored childhood home, which the town preserved through a state historic preservation grant.

The Genius was from here.