West Memphis Three
At the time of their arrests, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. was 17 years old, Jason Baldwin was 16 years old, and Damien Echols was 18 years old.
Music of Arkansas
West Memphis, just across the Mississippi river from Memphis, Tennessee, has its own thriving music scene. When Beale Street would shut down for the night, performers like BB King, Ike Turner, Junior Parker, and Elmore James came to 8th street in West Memphis. Wayne Jackson even said once that "the Memphis sound was born over the river". Jackson was born and raised in West Memphis as was Chicago blues artist Junior Wells. The West Memphis R&B scene was an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.