James M. Dixon (Yazoo County)
State House: 1872-1873
Born: c. 1835 in North Carolina
Born into slavery in North Carolina and brought to Mississippi in the 1840s. Carpenter, Methodist Episcopal minister. He was a Justice of the Peace, a member of the Board of Supervisors, chancery clerk (1874-1876), member of the school board, and a school trustee. When he was in the legislature, he served on the State Library Committee and the Joint Standing Committee of Executive Contingent Fund. Gave testimony in the congressional investigation into Mississippi’s violent 1875 election season; he recalled one white man telling him, “You have been a good man ever up to this time, but if you will now oppose us, we shall look upon you as an enemy.”
Dixon is recorded on the 1870 and 1880 census in Yazoo County with wife Caroline and their children. His daughter Alice is listed as a junior in the 1875 Tougaloo College catalog.
