Father Dickson Cemetery

Father Dickson Cemetery was founded in 1903. The cemetery is named for Moses Dickson, a prominent African American abolitionist who passed away in 1901 and was re-interred here. This was one of the first public cemeteries in St. Louis available to African Americans, and it is the resting place for veterans from every U.S. war from the Civil War through the Korean War. The most famous man buried here, outside of Moses Dickson himself, is James Milton Turner. Turner's grave is located approximately 30 feet east of where you are standing. , Born a slave in St. Louis County in 1839, James Milton Turner gained his freedom on December 5, 1843 when his mother was also freed. James' father, John Turner, was a successful veterinary practitioner in downtown St. Louis who had bought his own freedom, and according to most sources purchased his wife and son's freedom as well. Young James attended Reverend John Berry Meachum's clandestine "Candle Tallow School," so named because it met in the windowless basement of Meachum's First African Baptist Church to avoid a Missouri law prohibiting the education of African Americans. As a teenager, in the late 1850s, Turner attended Oberlin College in Ohio. , Turner returned to St. Louis from Oberlin, and soon entered the service of Madison Miller, the former mayor of Carondelet. The 1860 St. Louis census shows Turner working as a porter. Miller, however, became a Union officer in the Civil War, and Turner (working as a civilian aide) was with Miller during his early military campaigns. , Turner's service ended after he was wounded at the April, 1862, Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. At Shiloh, Col. Madison Miller commanded a part of the division of the Union army that surrendered to Confederates in the "Hornet's Nest." Thinking Miller had been killed, Turner carried $4,000 that Miller had entrusted to him back home and presented the sum to Miller's wife. Miller had not died. When he returned from captivity, Miller rewarded Turner's honesty with a gift of $500. Importantly, Turner had also earned the trust of a powerful political family. Miller's brother-in-law, Thomas C. Fletcher, was elected Governor of Missouri in 1864. , In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Turner to the post of Resident and Consul General to Liberia. He served in this capacity in Monrovia, Liberia, until 1878. Turner was the first African American born into slavery to serve as a foreign diplomat for the United States. , In 1867, Fletcher appointed Turner as Assistant Superintendent of Public Schools. While it permitted separate schools for African Americans, Missouri's landmark Constitution of 1865 guaranteed the equal distribution of state public school funds "without regard to color." In this role, Turner embarked on a two year odyssey covering much of central and southeast Missouri, reporting on local school officials who were not meeting their obligations to promote equal opportunity in education. During this period, Turner also accumulated considerable political power. It is said that he delivered 20,000 African American votes to the Republicans in the 1870 elections. , Turner was involved in many public activities during the rest of his long life. He died as a result of a railroad accident in Oklahoma in 1915, and was brought home to rest here., Missouri's Colored Troops, Missouri began to enroll African American troops soon after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation became effective on January 1, 1863. The First and Second Missouri Colored Infantries reported for duty at Benton Barracks, St. Louis (now the site of Fairgrounds Park). When African American troops were reorganized in 1864, these units were designated the 62nd and 65th Regiments, U.S. Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.)., Over 8,000 men enrolled in Missouri's African American regiments, and many more Missourians helped fill the ranks of the earliest African American regiments in Kansas, Arkansas and Iowa., The 62nd U.S.C.T. was arguably the most famous of Missouri's Black regiments, because soldiers of the 62nd fought in the last organized battle of the Civil War at Palmetto Ranch, Texas, in May, 1865. They, and their brothers of the 65th regiment became famous for another reason after the Civil War ended., In 1866, still stationed in Texas and Louisiana, men of the two regiments, along with their white officers, donated over $6,000 from their pay to support the establishment of a Missouri school for African Americans. Their dream resulted in the founding of the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City. Since 1921 this school has been known as Lincoln University., James Milton Turner and Moses Dickson helped raise additional funds to support Lincoln Institute. Turner, with his political following, was instrumental in obtaining the first appropriation of funds by the Missouri Legislature to support the Institute., Moses Dickson, Moses Dickson was born free in Ohio on April 5, 1824. In 1846, in St. Louis, Dickson with eleven other men formed the Knights of Liberty, with a plan to organize an army of slaves to accomplish the violent overthrow of slavery. Dickson later claimed that tens of thousands of people throughout the South joined this organization before it was disbanded in 1856. , After serving in the Union army, Dickson helped found the Missouri Equal Rights League, of which James Milton Turner was Secretary. He was later ordained a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1872, Dickson formed the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, more commonly known as "The Order of Twelve" in memory of the founders of the Knights of Liberty. He was known as "Father" in this social fraternity, which evolved into a vast benevolent association that offered to members such benefits as burial and sickness payments. By the 1900s, the Order claimed 100,000 members in 30 states and foreign countries., Father Moses Dickson died in St. Louis on November 28, 1901 of natural causes.