Day laid to rest in Spring Hill Cemetery; Rev. Jesse Jackson attends burial, calls for justice

Oct. 19—DANVILLE — Family members gathered at Spring Hill Cemetery in Danville Tuesday morning to lay 25-year-old Jelani Jesse Javontae Day to rest.

As questions about Day's death remain, Day's family reached out to Chicago's Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., who attended Tuesday morning's burial.

According to Bishop Tavis L Grant II, Rainbow PUSH Coalition national field director, there's "a great deal of misinformation" regarding Day's death, and the family's hope is that more national attention will help the investigation.

The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is an international human and civil rights organization founded by Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Also attending the burial were Rev. Jackson's son and fellow activist Jonathan Jackson.

There also was a gathering Tuesday at the Grove Street Church of God in Christ in Champaign.

Rev. Jesse Jackson demanded justice, and called for the state's attorney general and others to investigate. He called Day's death an "Emmitt Till-type crime." Till was a Black 14-year-old from Chicago who was abducted and killed in 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi.

"I will not stop until I find out what happened to Jelani," Day's mother, Carmen Bolden Day, said.

"I am asking, I'm begging, pleading for the state's attorney general to do what he needs to do to make sure that we get the FBI involved. It is important that we find out what happened to Jelani. Jelani could have been anybody's son, he could have been anybody's brother, he could have been anybody's nephew, your cousin; but he was my son and I want to know what happened to Jelani," Bolden Day said, crying.

Rev. Jesse Jackson said, there's been "too much inaction. We will get the FBI involved." He said they'll get state and federal officials involved.

Bolden Day said Jelani was one of the best things that God blessed her with, "and I will never get to talk to him or see him ... It's beyond hurt. I shouldn't be lowering him into the ground. Nothing in his life, nothing that he, his walk would make you think he deserved to be found face down in a river decomposed (where) I cannot identify him."

Bolden Day and other family members said they don't have closure yet.

"I'm not the first mother to lose a child. But when somebody loses their child, the majority of the time they know what happened to them or know why they're burying them. I don't know why I'm burying Jelani. I don't know what happened to Jelani. So I don't have any closure," Carmen said.

"I think about Jelani all the time," she added about missing him. "I look at his siblings everyday. I think about why I don't have a phone call; why I don't get a text message."

Day went missing Aug. 24 after he was seen on video surveillance that morning at the ISU student center and then, about an hour and a half later, at a business in Bloomington. His car was discovered in a wooded area of a park in Peru, Ill., on Aug. 26, and his body was discovered along the Illinois River on Sept. 4. A month after Day went missing, the LaSalle County Coroner's Office finally identified the body as Day's.