Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice says it has identified the graves of more than 1,000 children linked to 40 juvenile reform and detention facilities across 29 states. NPR reports the largest known burial ground is across from Maryland’s Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, where researchers found more than 230 Black boys buried in the woods.
Largest known site: Maryland
NPR reports that the graves sit near the former House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Md., which operated from 1870 to 1937. Georgetown researchers describe it as the first juvenile detention facility for Black children in the American South and say some children were as young as 5. According to a Maryland Department of Juvenile Services report cited by NPR, boys at the institution were forced to work and were disciplined by white guards using a “brass-studded belt.” In the 1920s, the report says, boys were leased to nearby farms, with the institution taking most or all of their pay, and they labored in a broom factory that Baltimore City labor union investigators in 1926 called a “firetrap.”
Families confront lost names
NPR interviewed relatives now learning of ancestors buried at Cheltenham. Veronica Spears said researchers informed her family that her great-uncle, Arthur Hamilton, died at the institution in 1917; the family was told tuberculosis was the cause. Researchers have not located his remains. At the site, Spears’ cousin, Pastor Chuck Copeland, read a marker aloud—“Thirteen years old from Baltimore, Mark Davis, 1885”—and said, “He didn’t count for nothing. He meant nothing to them,” according to NPR. NPR also reports that more than 200 graves there are marked only by cinder blocks with no names or dates.
Some sites beside facilities still in use
Marc Schindler, who worked at Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services when the Cheltenham burial ground was rediscovered in 2024, now leads Georgetown’s research. He told NPR that some of the graves they have identified are next to juvenile detention centers that are still operating. Schindler called the findings “unquestionably a national tragedy” and said he hopes for “an appropriate response” from states.
State responses so far
As awareness grows, NPR reports that Florida lawmakers created a $20 million fund for survivors who attended a reform school that closed in 2011, and Arkansas established a memorial to honor 21 Black boys who died in a 1959 fire at a correctional facility. In Maryland, NPR reports lawmakers formed a commission—housed in the state attorney general’s office—to identify those buried at Cheltenham and involve families in decisions about the site and state amends.
Policy changes in Maryland
State Sen. Will Smith, who sponsored the Maryland commission bill, told NPR that connecting this history to current practices is critical. He pointed to laws that send hundreds of Maryland youths to adult court each year and noted lawmakers passed his bill removing some automatic transfer offenses, such as firearm possession. NPR reports that change took effect this month, and Smith credited a visit by the legislature’s Black caucus to the Cheltenham gravesite with helping build support.
