He died after Memphis police officers and Shelby County sheriff’s deputies crushed his skull. Fury erupted across the city. 

The case and the riots it sparked left a 3-year-old dead, businesses burned and the local law enforcement community in a tailspin to repair police and community relations. 

Fifty years later, the work remains unfinished. And the name of victim Elton Hayes still haunts those who lived through the turmoil during the fall of 1971. 

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“They beat him in a ditch, that’s what I remember so vividly about it, the venue of the slaughter,” Memphis attorney Walter Bailey said. “I mean they bludgeoned him to death in a ditch. A child.”

Bailey was one of several Black leaders who pushed for the arrest of the police officers in Hayes’ death. Fifty years later, Bailey is still fighting for more equitable policing. 

Below: A timeline of the events surrounding Hayes’ death

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Hayes, a former Melrose High School student, died Oct. 15, 1971, about a month before his 18th birthday. Police initially said Hayes received his injuries because he was thrown from the car in an accident. However, after an autopsy, Shelby County District Attorney General Phil Canale ruled the death a homicide. 

Following Hayes’ funeral and the attempted police cover-up, riots erupted across Memphis, a city still simmering from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. three years earlier.

“The community was still very much unsettled regarding racial progress,” Bailey recalled. “The turmoil and unrest lingered.”

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During the riots, several businesses burned and a 3-year-old toddler was struck by a police car as he crossed the street. Stax star Isaac Hayes, no relation to Elton Hayes, met with Mayor Henry Loeb to explain that some of the political and police tactics were invoking violence instead of quelling it. 

The fury eventually simmered but “people never forgot about Elton Hayes and what police did to him,” Bailey said.

Vasco Smith, then with the NAACP, called the officers involved “psychopathic killers with badges.” 

He, along with his wife Maxine Smith and Bailey, led the community protest.

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In a letter to then Memphis Police Chief Henry Lux, Smith, Bailey and six other Black elected officials called for the officers involved in Hayes’ death to be fired.

“Our constituency has been patient and tolerant for years relative to complaints of police abuse and misconduct to no avail,” they wrote in the letter to Lux. “In this dastardly situation, it is unreasonable to expect us to maintain that same degree of patience and tolerance. We want results!”

After pressure from the NAACP, eight police officers were indicted and arrested, but two years after Hayes’ slaying, they were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Jim Jalenak and Allen Blair filed civil rights lawsuits in state and federal court against the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office on behalf of Hayes’ mother.

Jalenak said he took the Hayes case because Hayes’ grandmother, Viola Niter, worked for his family for decades.

“He was their whole life,” Jalenak said. “He was a very beloved child.”

The city and county settled the two lawsuits in 1975 and the family received less than $100,000. One news story of the time said $40,000, but Jalenak said he couldn’t recall the exact settlement total. 

“It was the biggest civil rights settlement in Tennessee history at that time,” Jalenak said.

The settlement was also a small victory in the ongoing public debate about police violence against Black Memphians. From 1969 to 1974, nearly 86% of people shot by Memphis police officers were Black and about 14% were white, according to research from criminologist James Fyfe. 

“The data strongly support the assertion that police there did differentiate racially with their trigger fingers,” Fyfe wrote in his report.

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Police response

The riots, lawsuits and national media coverage sent the Memphis Police Department into a frenzy as officials voiced the desire to improve the department’s standing. 

The department launched a survey on police and community relations and co-hosted workshops where community officials, concerned citizens and union representatives suggested departmental improvements.

The proposed improvements included things like counseling for officers, better recruitment and promotion of Black officers and a family intervention unit specially trained to handle domestic disputes. It also recommended staffed community centers that offer social services and a citizen advisory board that not only heard complaints but also reviewed policies.

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A follow-up report also recommended the force create its first police policies and procedures manual. 

While the recommended changes were not implemented immediately, continued pressure has brought some of these ideas to fruition.

Hayes’ death led to changes to MPD’s leadership with the appointment of Jay Hubbard in 1972 as the first civilian police director.

Memphis police unionized in 1973 by forming the Memphis Police Association, something city leaders of the time, including Loeb, hoped to avoid. 

After a call for a citizens law enforcement review board failed in the late 1970s, the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) was not formed until 1994, 21 years after Hayes’ death.

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In 2021, activists are still demanding police reforms. The city said it has put some reforms in place, such as MPD’s policy to have all unnecessary force cases reviewed by the district attorney and increasing the staffing of CLERB. Other new policies include a requirement that police warn people before firing and that police intervene to stop other officers from using excessive force. 

Yet, racial disparities in policing continues to exist. According to a Washington Post database on police shootings, 1,555 Black Americans were killed by police from 2015 to 2021, more than twice the rate of white Americans.

Jalenak said 50 years after Hayes death, “racism is still pernicious.”

After the death of Hayes and the trial acquitting the officers in his death, McKissack and Barnes continued to live in Memphis. 

McKissack died in 2017 at the age of 60. Barnes, 65, may still live in Memphis but could not be reached for comment.

Some draw parallels between Hayes’s death and the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown and George Floyd. 

Jalenak said until police violence ends, he is at least reassured to know that today’s families are starting to get something that Hayes’ family never received — an apology and criminal convictions.

After a Minnesota police officer was convicted of George Floyd’s murder, Jalenak emailed his former law partner.

“I wrote that I wish Viola, Elton’s grandmother, was here to see this,” Jalenak said. “It would have meant a lot to her.”