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Some gravestones lie flat on the ground, leaves and twigs partially covering their weathered epitaphs, like the one for “Mark Davis of Baltimore, Died Feb. 3, 1885, Aged 13.”
In another section of woods, there aren’t even headstones: About 100 cinder blocks lined in rows mark the graves of some of the Black boys buried here from the 19th into the 20th centuries and largely forgotten, the cinder blocks sunken and visited only by bees.
That was the scene that greeted about a dozen members of the Legislative Black Caucus as they walked through heavy brush, weeds and thorny undergrowth to inspect graves of boys who died in what the old House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in southern Prince George’s County.
The neglect of the boys’ graves is made more stark by the fact that it sits next to the pristine, manicured lawn of the Cheltenham Veterans Cemetery.
“I drive past this place every day, the pristine detail that’s taken in grave sites such as this,” state Sen. Michael Jackson (D-Prince George’s, Charles and Calvert) said of the veterans cemetery, before reflecting on the forgotten an overgrown graves of the boys.
“There is no reason to disrespect anyone,” said Jackson, whose district includes the graves. “We have a lot of work to do, folks.”
The folks he was addressing were the caucus members, who are already working on legislation to not only clean up the burial site “to bring dignity and care” to the boys’ lives, but also create a commission to investigate their deaths.
A small pot of money may help with the restoration of the site near the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, which is managed by the state Department of Juvenile Services. The department applied this summer for a $31,000 grant to the African American Heritage Preservation Program to work on restoring the wooded area.
If the grant is approved later this year, the state may invest more money for “restoration and repair of the cemetery” in next fiscal year’s capital budget, according to a statement Tuesday evening from the Gov. Wes Moore’s office.
“Our history is our power and everyone shares responsibility in preserving and uplifting the countless stories of our state that have often gone unrecognized and unheralded,” said David Turner, the governor’s communications director. “We look forward to working with the General Assembly, our state agencies, local leaders, and community advocates on this project.”
‘Scandalous’
Work on a restoration project began with former Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi, who stepped down in June.
Marc Schindler, former assistant secretary and chief of staff with the department, who walked the woods with legislators on Tuesday, first visited the site last year. He later returned to look for any headstones with department staff, a volunteer genealogist and some youth from the nearby Cheltenham detention center.
Schindler said research revealed that the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children was opened around 1870, about 20 years after the House of Refuge was opened for juvenile offenders. But that facility, on the site of what is the current Charles Hickey School, was reserved for white children.
Schindler said the conditions at the House of Refuge for white children focused “on education and treatment.” He called the treatment of Black children at the House of Reformation “scandalous.”
He said there could be more headstones because some records are missing and death certificates were not issued in most parts of the state until 1898.
“It’s hard to find the words to describe how sad and outrageous it is,” said Schindler, who led caucus members through the site. “But we just don’t know how many more are here.”
Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) said the injustices of the past can still be seen today, in the treatment of youth who are automatically charged as adults for a number of crimes under Maryland law. It’s why he plans to reintroduce a bill that seeks to raise the age at which a youth would be tried as an adult, from 14 to age 16.
Smith’s bill also proposed for those 16 and younger charged with offenses such as first-degree assault, third-degree sex offense and certain offenses involving machine guns would be eligible to go to juvenile court.
“Even our predecessors in the General Assembly understood that youth should not be in adult prisons, except they just segregated them,” Smith said. “We are still going to restore and maintain this facility and this site, but what are the next steps?”
Del. Gary Simmons (D-Anne Arundel), who visited the site Tuesday, said he’s working on legislation to assess how the state can fund efforts to to identify and restore burial sites and cemeteries across the state. Part of that would be through the state’s Office of Cemetery Oversight, which is under the Department of Labor.
“We have a tremendous amount of neglected cemeteries here in the state of Maryland,” he said. “We have all kind of different methods that we generate funds for the state. This is about community pride. We’ll get it done.”
