Barbara,
I & my family have been going to the Ft. Parker Cemetery for over 50 years now & Sim Dixon has always been been on our list after family stops. He's within 20 feet of my grandparents resting place.
I've always just been told he was an outlaw & ended up at an angle due to his life's endeavors. I was recently told a newer more specific version, though & according to my sister Carolyn & it goes like this:
During the days of reconstruction when most of the men folk were trying to get home from fighting up north there were a series of heinous crimes perpetrated on some of the women folk of Limestone County. Apparently, a gang of outlaws (probably damn yankees) were raping local ladies & the installed carpetbaggers (more damn yankees) would or could do nothing to bring them to justice.
Up steps Sim Dixon who would not allow this to continue. He hunted these varmint down & killed each and every one of them. Sim's actions soon became common knowledge to the locals & being a normally gentle & upright man did not deny the charges when the law questioned him on the matter. He had taken the law into his own hands & would pay with his life. He was hung by the neck until dead.
All locals would have known, if not witnessed the execution of Mr. Dixon. Now, for the rest of the story. Sim Dixon was a black man who had come to avenge the wrong's of the white ladies of the area. After the hanging, his body was claimed by these same ladies & buried in the local cemetery along with martyrs of Ft. Parker & other good citizens. Some of the locals refused Mr. Dixon's burial in a white cemetery, so the ladies made a deal. He would be laid to rest at an angle compared to the rest of the graves. All was agreed on & the ladies did right by him.
Now he stands out at Ft. Parker Memorial Cemetery as a person who did right by his neighbors, paid a heavy price, but is still honored today.