Nearly a year to the day since he vanished like a vapor, his lifeless body to be discovered days later floating in the muddy Illinois River in a former “sundown town,” family and friends gathered in downstate Normal on Saturday to remember Jelani Day.
They came to the campus of Illinois State University, where Jelani was just beginning his first year as a graduate student last August, most dressed in all-white. They gathered inside an elegant candle-lit ballroom filled with roundtables topped with white cloth and portraits of Jelani Day.
