One of the best football players Vicksburg has ever produced is joining the state’s sports immortals.

Richard Price, a star defensive lineman at Carr Central in the late 1950s and later at Ole Miss, was one of six people announced as inductees to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019.

Also elected to the Hall of Fame on Thursday were Jackson Prep football coach Ricky Black; Mississippi State football player and coach Rockey Felker; former women’s pro golfer Cissye Gallagher; Greenwood native and former NFL star Wilbert Montgomery; and former Major League Baseball pitcher Roy Oswalt.

Price was a star lineman on Carr Central’s 1955 Big 8 Conference championship team, and then initially played college football at Texas. He was overwhelmed by homesickness, however, and hitchhiked home from Austin. He soon joined the team at Ole Miss and quickly became a star.

Price played guard and linebacker for Ole Miss and led them to a 29-3-1 record and three bowl victories in three seasons.

“As far as I know, I’m the first sophomore to ever start for Coach Vaught,” Price said in an interview with The Vicksburg Post in January. “I had just turned past 18, and all those other guys were 23 and 24 years old. I was very young, but playing for him he just took an interest in me. When he’d get in trouble, he wanted me in the ballgame.”

Price played in the 1961 Senior Bowl, and was an All-Southeastern Conference and All-America player his senior season. He was selected by the Oakland Raiders in the eighth round of the American Football League draft but never played for the team. He eventually found success in private business in Columbia, where he still lives.

Price’s legacy remains at Ole Miss. The football team’s top offensive lineman each year receives the Richard Price Award, and he is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.

“I have no complaints,” Price said in January. “I’ve had a colorful life, a wonderful wife, wonderful children, great friends, and more than anything, a great Lord.”