Jarrett Mcclendon

Jarrett I. McClendon, an 18-year-old Black male from St. Louis, Missouri, died on June 29, 2008. In the days that followed, what surfaces publicly is the quiet, formal language of a death notice: his name, his city, the date everything stopped, and the instructions for where loved ones were expected to gather when grief needed a place to land.

A service was announced for 10 a.m. the following Tuesday at S.M. Cunningham Funeral Home, on Marcus Avenue in St. Louis. It’s the kind of detai ...