FATHER DICKSON'S CEMETERY AND ME

As a child, I attended James Milton Turner Elementary School in Meacham Park, a black subdivision in Kirkwood , Missouri, about 10 miles southwest of St. Louis. Turner established black schools in Missouri, as Assistant Commissioner of Education, after the Civil War, was a Missouri Prince Hall Mason Grandmaster, and Consul to Haiti during the Grant Administration, and attorney active in Oklahoma oil claims among black Indian heirs. Turner is buried here. We lived on Big Bend Blvd., near Sappington Rd. , near this historic cemetery . Father Dixon had organized the Knights of Tabor, a 50,000-member, secret, pre-Civil War organization of black men and women, who were armed and preparing to fight to end slavery, when the Civil War broke out; so, they joined the Union effort instead as individuals. Father Dixon, was an AME preacher, of epic proportions, is buried in this cemetery, that is named for him.