Gospel singer Vernon Oliver Price, known widely in the Church of God in Christ for her role in music and education, was born on December 1, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, to Maudell and Mauris Oliver. She graduated from Chicago’s DuSable High School in 1948. Price began singing at Bishop William M. Roberts’s Fortieth Street Church of God In Christ (COGIC) (later Roberts Temple COGIC) on Chicago’s South Side under the leadership of Minnie Pearl Roberts Thomas when she was three years old, where she was later joined by her sister Loretta Oliver. In 1941, Price became a member of the choir at Bishop Louis Henry Ford’s Saint Paul COGIC, also on Chicago’s South Side. She also was a guest artist on Mother Lucy Smith’s All Nations Pentecostal Broadcasts with such artists as Little Lucy Smith, Reverend James Cleveland, and The Watson Family. As a teenager, she was in the DuSable High School choir under the tutelage of Mildred Bryant Jones and sang with the Emma Jackson Singers, Ernestine Washington, and Emily Bram Bibby. She also trained with Anna Broy Crockett Ford, whom she later served as assistant director of the COGIC International Music Department. Price went on to serve as choir director of Saint Paul COGIC, church soloist for over eighty years, and jurisdictional soloist for the COGIC First Jurisdiction of Illinois for over sixty-five years. Price appeared on Jubilee Showcase and has performed at numerous hospitals and nursing homes. She also ministered at Illinois’s Joliet, Statesville, and Dwight Penitentiaries for forty-five years and served as volunteer Protestant chaplain for the Jordan Penal Group.