ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A sealed envelope awaits in Rissi Palmer's Bible.





Country singer Rissi Palmer performs for students in an after-school program at Atlanta's Parkside Elementary.





It's her Grammy acceptance speech, the one she wrote as a 12-year-old. She vowed not to open it until she could read it from the stage accepting her award.





Sixteen years later, the time may be nearer when Palmer can open the envelope. The road has been a long one, starting with her standing on a milk crate as a child so she could sing solos in the church choir. But these days, she is an up-and-comer in country music -- and a rare African-American performer in the genre.





Palmer acknowledged this week to students in Atlanta that some people had told her she couldn't sing country because she was African-American. But she said, "When you tell me I can't do something, it just makes me want to do it more."





Palmer told CNN that no one in the music industry had discouraged her based on race but that people who loved her were concerned country stardom might be a tough goal. She said she doesn't believe her story is different from any other musician's: "The music industry is just hard."





Palmer told students at Parkside Elementary School that she grew up listening to all kinds of music, including country. "My mother was a big country music fan," she recalled. The family also listened to R&B and classic soul, such as Sam Cooke, she said.





"I loved the way the country artists wrote songs," Palmer told about 50 students, most of them minorities, in an after-school program at Parkside. She liked the way that country songs told stories: "I always liked telling stories."





"Country Girl," the first single off Palmer's self-titled 2007 debut album, made her the first African-American female in 20 years to hit Billboard's country chart, according to Country Music Television.





Country music is home to a smattering of well-known African-American artists. Charley Pride is by far the most visible, but other artists have dabbled in country as well -- the Supremes, for instance, and Ray Charles. More recently, Darius Rucker, longtime lead singer for Hootie and the Blowfish, hit the top of the country charts as well.





African-Americans always have been in the country music industry, said John Rumble, senior historian for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. However, it's rare for an artist -- of any race -- to reach the level of stardom attained by Pride, who had 67 records on the country chart between 1966 and 1990, more than 20 of them in the Top 10.





"Some people at the time, and since, called him the Jackie Robinson of country music, but nobody who followed him has yet reached that level," Rumble said. "... He's almost an impossible standard to match." However, given Rucker's recent success, he is showing "superstar potential" in the country industry, Rumble added.





Palmer lost her mother at an early age but has said her parent's love for country music stayed with her. Still, she said she doubted she could break into the genre.





"When you're a child, you react to something that's familiar and looks like you," she told CMT in 2007. "And there was nobody [in country music] who looked like me. Just being a kid, you don't see black country singers. So you don't think that's a possibility for you. You see black pop singers. You see black R&B singers. You see black rockers. So you say, 'If I'm black and I want to sing, then I probably have to sing R&B.' "





Rumble echoed Palmer's comments about the music industry being tough on new artists. More than ever, "it takes a lot of money to put an artist
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