A sweeping research effort has uncovered the burial sites of more than 1,000 children on the grounds of former juvenile reform schools and youth detention facilities nationwide, according to findings released by Georgetown University's Center for Youth Justice. The graves span 29 states, making the discovery one of the most extensive documentations of child mortality within America's historical system of youth incarceration.
The center has been working since February on what it calls the Forgotten Children Initiative, a project aimed at identifying not only the children who died while in custody but also any surviving relatives who may never have learned what happened to their ancestors. Researchers have focused on 40 reform schools and youth detention centers, piecing together burial records, institutional logs and family histories.
The largest single burial site identified so far is located near the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Maryland, a facility that operated from 1870 to 1937. Approximately 230 Black boys are buried at the Maryland site, which sits in a wooded area across the street from what is now the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center. The grave markers lie adjacent to the Maryland Veterans Cemetery.
For families only now learning of these deaths, the revelations have been deeply unsettling. Veronica Spears, whose family was contacted by researchers, described the moment she read a letter informing her that her grandfather had a brother who died at the Maryland facility at just 12 years old. "The letter said they found out that my grandfather had a brother that was in a reformation institution," Spears told NPR. "And he passed away at the age of 12. We never knew."
Spears said she began shaking as she read the letter, and when her husband asked what was wrong, she could not immediately find the words to explain. Her family is one of 16 that researchers have connected to children who died at the Cheltenham facility. Spears' great-uncle is among the Black youths who perished while incarcerated there.
The findings shed light on a largely obscured chapter of American history, when reform schools and juvenile detention centers operated with minimal public oversight and often kept poor records of the children in their care. Many of the institutions served marginalized communities, including Black children, and deaths from disease, neglect and abuse were frequently recorded only in sparse institutional documents or not at all.
The initiative's work is ongoing. Researchers continue to comb through archives in an effort to identify every child buried at the 40 facilities under review, as well as to locate descendants who may have spent generations unaware of their relatives' fate. The project represents a significant undertaking in historical accountability, aiming to restore names and identities to children who were largely forgotten by the institutions that held them.
The scale of the discovery — over 1,000 graves across 29 states — suggests that the practice of burying children on or near institutional grounds was widespread, not confined to a single region or era. The Maryland site alone accounts for nearly a quarter of the identified burials, underscoring how concentrated the deaths could be at individual facilities.
The House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children operated for nearly seven decades before closing in 1937. Its history reflects a broader pattern in which segregated institutions for Black youth received fewer resources and less scrutiny than those serving white children, potentially contributing to higher mortality rates.
For the families involved, the research has opened painful questions about why they were never told what happened to their relatives. In Spears' case, the death of a 12-year-old boy more than eight decades ago had been erased from the family narrative until researchers reached out.
The Center for Youth Justice has not indicated when its full findings will be published or how many additional graves it expects to identify. But the preliminary numbers already point to a national legacy of child deaths in custody that has gone largely unrecognized in public memory and policy discussions.
The identification of surviving family members is a central component of the initiative, reflecting an effort not only to document history but to provide answers to descendants. For many families, the notification letters represent the first official acknowledgment that a relative died while confined in a youth institution.
The project also raises broader questions about how society remembers and reckons with the treatment of children in state custody, particularly those from communities that lacked the political power to demand accountability at the time. The burial sites, many of them unmarked or tucked away in wooded areas, stand as physical evidence of lives that ended behind institutional walls.
As researchers continue their work, the Forgotten Children Initiative is expected to expand the record of known burials and deepen public understanding of the conditions that led to so many children dying in facilities meant to reform and rehabilitate them. For families like Spears', the effort has already transformed a long-hidden loss into a named and acknowledged part of their history.
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