The Priest (He Woke in Darkness)

The "Priest" was a character who appeared in a recurring nightmare that plagued former deputy Cecil Price. In his dream, the Priest was the local recruiter for the black supremacist group, the Black Knights of Voodoo. He hated whites, and did much to insure the racial hierarchy that kept whites oppressed in Mississippi remained in place.

In Price's nightmare, after he, Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid were detained by a Neshoba county deputy sheriff and held in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the deputy went directly to consult with the Priest, which Price took as a bad sign.

Sure enough, hours later, Price, Shabaa, and Abdul-Rashid were released, only to be stopped once again by the deputy, who forced them into his car and took them to an isolated spot. With the Priest's oversight, the three were shot by BKV man Wayne Roberts, with Price enduring a savage beating before his death.

The Priest paralleled the real Edgar Ray Killen, nicknamed the Preacher, who served as the local recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. In real life, Cecil Price, after detaining James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, contacted Killen, and the two put together a plan to murder the three civil rights workers.