May 21, 1919

Former soldier Frank Livingston was burned alive at age twenty-five near El Dorado (Union County) for the alleged murder of his employer. Livingston’s lynching was among several similar incidents in Arkansas involving returned African American World War I–era servicemen. After discovering a bloody pair of pants supposedly belonging to Livingston on the scene, the sheriff assembled a posse. Livingston was captured on the morning of May 21 and forced to confess. A mob of 150 to 200, both Black and white, prepared to lynch him at a point eighteen miles west of El Dorado. The sheriff learned about the capture, but by the time he had arrived at the site, Livingston had been tied to a tree and set on fire.