AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Researchers have found the graves of more than 1,000 children who died in youth prisons and reform schools across 29 states. The largest known site in Maryland is the final resting place for more than 200 Black boys. Jenny Abamu from member station WAMU visited the site and has this story.
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JENNY ABAMU, BYLINE: In the woods near the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, it's easy to miss the small headstones that sink into the fallen leaves and thorny brush. Chuck Copeland is a pastor who lives about two hours away. He has to lean in to read the headstones.
CHUCK COPELAND: He didn't count for nothing. He meant nothing to them.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Had a name...
COPELAND: Thirteen years old from Baltimore. Mark Davis, 1885.
ABAMU: Mark Davis died at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, which once stood where the current detention center is now. It was a segregated reform school created in 1870 to get Black children out of adult jails. But state researchers found children were sent there for being poor, homeless or orphaned. Earlier this year, Copeland's cousin, Veronica Spears, got a letter from researchers.
VERONICA SPEARS: My grandfather had a brother that was in a reformations institution, and he passed away at the age of 12. We never knew.
ABAMU: That brother was Arthur Hamilton. The family was told he died of tuberculosis in 1917. Marc Schindler was a senior official at Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services when the state confirmed this burial ground existed in 2024. Now he's at Georgetown University, where his team, so far, has found graves tied to 40 institutions, from Salem, Oregon, to Augusta, Maine. Some of the graves are next to juvenile detention centers and reform schools still in operation.
MARC SCHINDLER: Of course, we want to find out who is buried in places around the country. And we also know that their families have a right to know and to have this history and to make decisions about...
ABAMU: State officials around the country are looking at options for restitution. In Florida, lawmakers established a $20 million fund for survivors who attended a reform school that closed in 2011. In Arkansas, officials created a memorial to honor 21 Black boys who died at a correctional facility in 1959. This year in Maryland, state Senator Will Smith sponsored a bill creating a commission to research the children buried there.
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WILL SMITH: Understanding this history is tremendously important, but understanding how this history connects to our current practices is almost probably more important.
ABAMU: He pointed to Maryland laws that result in hundreds of children being charged as adults every year. He said accounting for the state's past involves changing those kinds of laws.
Deeper in the woods, the headstones stop. What's left are rows of gray cinder blocks, over 200, no names, no dates. Researchers believe Arthur Hamilton is somewhere in here. So does Veronica Spears.
SPEARS: I don't have any proof, no. I felt it in my chest. I felt the heaviness, and I knew then he was crying out to all of us - they all were - to let us know, we're here, and we were mistreated.
ABAMU: Copeland, the pastor, leads the rest of his family members in prayer.
COPELAND: Thank you for this opportunity to remember our Uncle Arthur Hamilton, and thank you, Father God, for just watching over us and then also allowing us...
ABAMU: Copeland says he wants the children to know they aren't forgotten.
For NPR News, I'm Jenny Abamu in Prince George's County, Maryland.
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