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.