Over 1,000 children are buried at juvenile detention centers nationwide : NPR

When Veronica Spears read the letter, she began to shake.

“What’s wrong?” her husband asked.

At the time, she said, she couldn’t find the words to respond.

“The letter said they found out that my grandfather had a brother that was in a reformation institution,” she later told NPR in an interview. “And he passed away at the age of 12. We never knew.”

Spears’ family is one of 16 that researchers with Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice have linked to children who died at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Md. The center has been working since February to identify children who died at 40 reform schools and youth detention centers across the country, as well as any surviving family members, as part of its Forgotten Children Initiative.

Veronica Spears’ great-uncle is one of the Black youth that died while incarcerated at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, which operated from 1870 to 1937 in Cheltenham, Md. The graves are located in a wooded area across the street from the facility.

Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR

hide caption

toggle caption
i

Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR

To date, the researchers have identified the graves of over 1,000 children across 29 states. The largest burial site is located near the House of Reformation, now the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. More than 230 Black boys were found buried in the woods across the street from the facility.

The small headstones are easy to miss, especially in the fall, when they seem to sink into the fallen leaves. A few pieces of trash from a nearby worksite mix with the leaves.

Chuck Copeland, Spears’ cousin, hiked through tall trees and thorny brush one morning in late September. A pastor who lives about two hours away, he leaned in to read one of the headstones.

“He didn’t count for nothing. He meant nothing to them,” he said, grimacing. Then he read, “Thirteen years old from Baltimore, Mark Davis, 1885.”

Grave markers for Black youth that died while being held at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Md. More than 230 Black boys are buried across the street from the facility, which now operates as the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center.

Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR

hide caption

toggle caption
i

Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR

Established in 1870, the House of Reformation, where Mark Davis died, was the first juvenile detention facility for Black children in the American South, according to the Georgetown researchers. It was created to get Black youth out of adult prisons. Children as young as 5 years old were incarcerated for criminal offenses, as well as a number of non-criminal reasons, including being poor, homeless or orphaned, researchers found.

While there, the boys were forced to work without food and disciplined by white guards with a “brass-studded belt,” according to a report from the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services. In the 1920s, the boys were leased to neighboring farms, with the institution taking most, if not all, of their pay. They were also forced to work in the reformatory’s broom factory in conditions described by Baltimore City labor union investigators in 1926 as a “firetrap,” according to the report.