Jelani Day, wearing his white lab coat after graduating from Alabama A&M University.
She wanted to be wrong. How could her former student—the brilliant, kind leader, the one who helped quieter students find their voice—suddenly be dead? Day was only 25 years old, one week into classes as a speech pathology graduate student at Illinois State University. Blakeney-Billings had written his recommendation letter for entry into the program.
Day studied under Blakeney-Billings as an undergraduate at Alabama A&M University. When he earned his white lab coat at graduation, a fellow student told Blakeney-Billings that Day wore the coat all the way back to his dorm, as though he would never take it off.
Blakeney-Billings remembered Day calling to tell her of his acceptance to ISU. She made Day promise to do well and make her proud. He promised.
It was the last time they would speak.
In the six months since his disappearance and death, Day’s mother, family, and friends have insisted that the Bloomington Police Department dragged their feet during the investigation. With the help of Black civil rights organizations and leaders like the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, the Day family is urging the public and police departments, especially those in predominately white neighborhoods, to pay more attention to cases of missing people of color.
Day first went missing on Aug. 24. The following day, his mother, Carmen Bolden Day, filed a missing person’s report to the Bloomington Police Department (BPD). On Aug. 26, BPD issued a public missing person’s bulletin. That same day, Day’s car was discovered in Peru, a town roughly an hour north of the Bloomington-Normal area, concealed in a wooded area near the Illinois Valley YMCA. Its license plates had been removed.
