Morris Livingston was born February 13, 1938, in Gourd, Lincoln County, Arkansas. Morris grew up picking cotton and working on his grandfather’s independent farm near the Valley Plantation.
He attended Shorter College in North Little Rock from 1955 to 1957. He then returned to farming before entering the US Army in 1960. Morris later worked for Smith Steel and then built locks and dams in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia. In 1977 he went to work for the Missouri Pacific Railroad and farmed 250 acres while working for the railroad. Morris retired in 1997.
Morris is married to Marie Livingston, whose grandmother Marie Jones migrated from South Carolina with her family to work as sharecroppers on the Pickens Plantation in 1902.
Morris offers a different perspective as an African American farmer who was not raised as a sharecropper on a plantation.
Morris and Marie lived in Dumas at the time of recording.
#1: Still frame from video interview with Morris Livingston at the John Hancock Jr. residence; Winchester, Arkansas, 2023
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#2: Behind-the-scenes photo from interview with Morris Livingston at the John Hancock Jr. residence; Winchester, Arkansas, 2023
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#3: Still frame from video interview with Morris Livingston at the John Hancock Jr. residence; Winchester, Arkansas, 2023
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
