Half a century later, the memory of Elton Hayes still echoes today
Fifty years ago in October, an Orange Mound teenager, Elton Hayes, was beaten to death by law enforcement officers at the end of a car chase. He’s buried in Galilee Memorial Gardens. His mother, who died in 2005, is buried next to him. (Bill Dries/Daily Memphian)
“It seems to me like it was a set up, the way that they did it,” Calvin McKissack said of the trial of eight Memphis Police officers and Sheriff’s deputies where he and George Barnes testified. All eight were acquitted in the beatings of McKissack and Barnes and the death of Elton Hayes. (Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries)
The ditch along Stepherson Road at Lamar Avenue where a group of law enforcement officers beat Elton Hayes to death in October 1971. The area was roped off as a crime scene in the investigation that followed. (Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries)
A Memphis Police officer on patrol during the violence that followed the funeral of Elton Hayes in October 1971. The smoke is from a nearby fire inside a business with a fire truck nearby. (Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries)
Park Avenue in Orange Mound was one of the flash points for the scattered violence that followed the beating death of Elton Hayes in October of 1971. (Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries)
George Barnes is shown during the trial of eight law enforcement officers charged with beating him and Calvin McKissack and killing Elton Hayes. (Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries)
In October 1971, three Orange Mound teenagers went for a ride that ended with law enforcement officers beating one of them to death in a ditch off Lamar Avenue. Fifty years later, no one has been convicted in the killing.
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Elton Hayes Calvin McKissack Memphis Police Department police brutality Orange Mound Subscriber Only2025 is almost over. Now is the time to support your trusted local news source.
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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