Black Lawmakers in MD Seek to Create a Commission to Investigate the Deaths of Black Children Killed at a Juvenile Prison and Buried by Gov Authorities in an Abandoned Graveyard

From [HERE] A group of Black Maryland state lawmakers plan to propose a bill during the upcoming legislative session that would create an independent commission to investigate the deaths of hundreds of Black children who died at a segregated juvenile detention facility during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Members of the General Assembly‘s Legislative Black Caucus are drafting a bill that would create the investigative body and allocate $750,000 so the commission can assemble a full accounting of what happened at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children – where Black boys as young as 7 were committed, typically for minor offenses.

Boys who died at the facility were buried on state-owned land in Cheltenham, near the former House of Reformation. State Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) and lawmakers who represent the area in Prince George’s County where the grave site is located, including Del. Jeffrie E. Long Jr. (D-Calvert) and state Sen. Kevin M. Harris (D-Prince George’s), said they will file the bill at the beginning of the legislative session in January.

The third-party nature of the commission is essential, Smith said, “because no agency and no entity can investigate itself.”

“The independent investigation will do a very thorough analysis and inquiry into some things that will ultimately and undoubtedly be uncomfortable to learn,” Smith said. “And to have that information presented in an unbiased and unvarnished manner is critical to the purpose of this project, which is to provide Marylanders an explanation and understanding of the tragedies that happened here.”

Long, who will sponsor the bill in the House of Delegates, said that since learning about the graveyard earlier this year, he has wanted to make it his “mission” to ensure the House of Reformation boys are properly memorialized.

A Washington Post investigation in September found that for decades, Maryland officials allowed the boys’ unmarked graves to remain dilapidated, even as they approved construction of a well-kept veteran’s cemetery yards away. The reporting also found that at least 230 children died at the facility between 1870 and 1939, far exceeding the 67 previously estimated by the state.

Staff members of Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services rediscovered about 100 of the graves last year, finding them in an overgrown, wooded patch of state property – many marked only by cinder blocks. Without further forensic and anthropological work at the site, it’s impossible to determine exactly how many children are buried in the House of Reformation graveyard. [MORE]