Cecil Ray Price (April 15, 1938 – May 6, 2001) was an American deputy sheriff and member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He was sentenced to a six-year prison term and served four and a half years at the Sandstone Federal Penitentiary in Minnesota. Following his release from prison, he returned to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and worked various jobs. Cecil Price died following a fall from a piece of equipment at his job on May 6, 2001.

Murders

On the afternoon of June 21, 1964, Price stopped a station wagon on Mississippi Highway 19 for allegedly speeding inside the Philadelphia city limits. Inside the station wagon were three civil rights workers James Chaney, who was driving, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Price arrested the three workers, allegedly on suspicion of having been involved in a church arson, and locked them in the county jail.

During this time, he denied their requests for a phone call and instructed that anyone who called looking for them should be told that the three men were not there.

Trial

Following the discovery of the bodies, the state of Mississippi refused to bring murder charges against anyone. In January 1965, however, Price and seventeen others were indicted with conspiring in a Ku Klux Klan plot to murder three young civil rights workers. The indictments were dismissed by District Court, but the decision was later reversed on appeal and the charges reinstated.

The trial of Price and the other defendants began on October 7, 1967, as United States v. Cecil Price, et al. During this time, Price declared himself a candidate for sheriff and he lost the election to Hop Barnette, one of his co-defendants.

thumb|right|Gravemaker of Price

Price died on May 6, 2001, three days after falling from a lift in an equipment rental store where he was working in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He died in the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the same hospital in Jackson where, thirty-seven years earlier, he had helped transport the bodies of the three slain civil rights workers for autopsies. Mrs. Pell, Clinton's wife, was based on Conner Price, Cecil's wife. She was played by Frances McDormand.

In the 1990 TV movie Murder in Mississippi, Deputy Winter – a fictionalized version of Cecil Price – was portrayed by Royce D. Applegate.

In HBO's 2016 movie All the Way, Cecil Price was portrayed by Colby Sullivan.

Archival footage of Price appears in the 30 for 30 documentary The Best that Never Was, which chronicles the life of National Football League player Marcus Dupree. The film begins with a brief mention of Price's involvement in the 1964 murders, then explains Price's role in assisting Dupree after his retirement from the NFL.

See also

  • Samuel Bowers
  • Olen Lovell Burrage
  • Edgar Ray Killen
  • Lawrence A. Rainey
  • Alton Wayne Roberts
  • Jimmy Snowden
  • Herman Tucker
  • Civil Rights Movement

References

  • University of Missouri Kansas City (faculty)
  • Spartacus Educational
  • Biography of Cecil Ray Price