A research effort at Georgetown University has uncovered burial sites containing the remains of more than 1,000 children on the grounds of, or adjacent to, juvenile reform schools and youth detention centers in 29 states, according to the Center for Youth Justice, which has been compiling the findings as part of its Forgotten Children Initiative.
The scale of the discovery has been described as a national reckoning with a largely hidden chapter of American institutional history—one in which children who died while in state custody were interred in unmarked or barely marked graves, often without their families ever being informed of the circumstances or location of their deaths.
The initiative, which began in February, has focused on identifying children who died at 40 reform schools and youth detention facilities nationwide, as well as locating any surviving family members who may still be searching for answers about relatives who disappeared into the system generations ago.
For Veronica Spears, the research brought a shock she was not prepared for. When she opened a letter from the researchers, she began trembling, unable to explain to her husband what she was reading. The correspondence informed her that her grandfather had a brother—a relative the family had never known existed—who had been committed to a reformatory and died there at the age of 12.
Spears is among 16 families that researchers have connected to children who died at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children in Cheltenham, Maryland. That facility operated from 1870 until 1937, serving Black boys during an era of rigid racial segregation in the state's juvenile justice and social welfare systems.
The burial ground associated with the Cheltenham institution sits in a wooded area across the street from the former facility, adjacent to the Maryland Veterans Cemetery. It is the largest single burial site documented by the researchers to date, holding the remains of approximately 230 Black boys, according to the center's findings.
Grave markers at the Maryland site, simple and weathered, remain visible among the trees. The location of the cemetery—situated across from a veterans' burial ground but separated from it—reflects the racial divisions that shaped how these children were treated both in life and in death.
The researchers' work has raised profound questions about accountability. Many of the institutions where these children died have long since closed, been repurposed, or, in the case of the Cheltenham facility, transitioned into modern juvenile detention operations. The Maryland site now operates as the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, meaning the legacy of the past is not merely historical but physically embedded in the present-day system.
The Forgotten Children Initiative represents one of the most comprehensive attempts to document deaths in juvenile custody across the country. By mapping burial sites in 29 states, the researchers have demonstrated that the phenomenon was not isolated to a single region or institution but was instead a widespread practice embedded in the nation's approach to confined youth.
For families like Spears', the revelations have been both painful and clarifying. The absence of records, the failure to notify relatives, and the passage of decades have meant that many families carried unanswered questions about missing children for generations. The letter that arrived at Spears' home filled in one such gap while opening a wound that had never fully healed.
The initiative's work continues, with researchers seeking to identify more of the children buried at these sites and to connect with families who may not yet know that their relatives are among the dead. The center has called on the public to come forward with information that could help match names to graves.
Advocates say the findings underscore the need for greater transparency in how juvenile facilities handle the deaths of young people in their care, and for a broader examination of the conditions that led to so many children dying while confined. The history documented by the researchers spans generations and reflects policies and practices that often treated institutionalized children as disposable.
The Maryland site holds particular significance because of its size and the racial composition of those buried there. The 230 Black boys interred in the wooded plot represent a community of children whose lives ended in state custody and whose stories were largely erased from public memory until the researchers began their work.
As the Forgotten Children Initiative continues to map burial grounds and identify families, it has begun to transform an untold history into a documented record. For the families receiving letters, the effort offers something that decades of silence denied them: the knowledge of what happened to their relatives, and the ability to mourn them properly.
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