Researchers at Georgetown University's Center for Youth Justice have uncovered the burial sites of more than 1,000 children on the grounds of former reform schools and juvenile detention facilities spread across 29 states, according to findings released as part of the center's Forgotten Children Initiative. The scale of the discovery makes it one of the most sweeping efforts yet to document the deaths of minors who were confined in American institutions during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The initiative, which launched in February, seeks to identify children who died while in the custody of 40 reform schools and youth detention centers nationwide. The work involves combing through institutional records, cemetery plots, and historical documents, then attempting to trace living relatives of the deceased. So far, researchers have connected 16 families to children who died at one Maryland facility alone, the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham.
That site, which operated from 1870 to 1937, holds special significance in the national tally. It is the largest single burial ground identified in the study, with roughly 230 Black boys interred there. The graves sit in a wooded area across the street from what is now the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, adjacent to the Maryland Veterans Cemetery. Small markers, many of them weathered or obscured by undergrowth, are all that remain to indicate who is buried there.
For families like that of Veronica Spears, the revelations arrived without warning. Spears described opening a letter from the researchers and beginning to tremble as she read its contents. Her husband asked what was wrong, but she said she could not immediately summon the words to explain. The letter informed her that her grandfather had a brother who had been committed to a reform institution and died there at the age of 12 — a relative her family had never known existed.
"It said they found out that my grandfather had a brother that was in a reformation institution," Spears told NPR in an interview. "And he passed away at the age of 12. We never knew." Her great-uncle is now counted among the Black youth who died while held at the Cheltenham facility, and his grave lies in the wooded tract beside the veterans cemetery. Spears was photographed at her home in Fort Washington, Md., reflecting on a family history that had been hidden from her for generations.
The Forgotten Children Initiative represents a deliberate attempt to reverse that erasure. Its researchers are not only locating graves but also building a documentary record that links individual children to the institutions that held them and, where possible, to descendants who may still be searching for answers. The project's organizers have framed the effort as a form of accountability — an attempt to give names, dates, and dignity to young people whose deaths were rarely publicized and whose burial places were often left unmarked or unmaintained.
The geographic reach of the findings is striking. Graves have now been documented in states across the country, suggesting that the practice of burying children on or near institutional grounds was widespread rather than isolated to a few jurisdictions. The 29-state count reflects both the prevalence of such facilities and the painstaking archival work required to confirm each burial site. Researchers caution that the total is likely to grow as additional records are examined and more sites are surveyed.
Historians of juvenile justice note that the era in which these institutions operated was marked by minimal oversight and few legal protections for confined children. Reform schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were often overcrowded, underfunded, and disciplined by harsh physical means. Disease, malnutrition, accidents, and abuse contributed to deaths that were frequently recorded only in institutional ledgers — if they were recorded at all. Families, particularly those who were poor or Black, often had little recourse and sometimes no notification of what had happened to their children.
The Cheltenham case illustrates how racial segregation shaped these institutions. The House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children was established specifically for Black youth, part of a separate and unequal system that concentrated neglect and abuse in facilities serving children of color. The fact that approximately 230 Black boys are buried at the site underscores the disproportionate toll that confinement took on African American families, whose grief was compounded by a lack of public acknowledgment.
For descendants like Spears, the discovery brings a complicated mixture of sorrow and closure. Learning of a relative who died at 12 raises questions that can never be fully answered: What illness or injury killed him? Was his family informed? Was anyone held responsible? The initiative's researchers hope that by identifying families, they can at least provide a measure of recognition that was denied at the time of death.
The project also raises broader questions about how communities and governments should respond to these burial grounds. Many of the sites are located on land that has since been repurposed, and some graves are threatened by development or neglect. Advocates argue that the locations should be documented, protected, and in some cases marked with memorials that acknowledge the children who died in state custody.
The Forgotten Children Initiative continues its work with the aim of expanding both the list of identified children and the number of families contacted. Researchers emphasize that the effort is ongoing and that the figures released so far represent only a partial accounting. Each newly identified grave, they say, is a reminder that the history of juvenile incarceration in the United States includes not only those who survived it but also more than a thousand children who did not — and whose resting places are only now coming to light.
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