The Maryland House of Delegates passed House Bill 552 on March 20 by a vote of 129 to 1, setting the stage for a formal investigation into one of the state’s most quietly buried chapters. The legislation would establish a commission tasked with examining the history, operations, and deaths of children held at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, a facility now known as the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County.
The lone dissenting vote came from State Delegate Robin L. Grammer, Jr. (R-Md.-06), who declined to comment when approached for a response.
What Cheltenham was
The facility was established in 1870, created after the Maryland General Assembly decided to separate juvenile offenders from adult prisoners. For Black children caught in that system, Cheltenham became the destination. Over the course of more than 150 years, the institution held an unknown number of children whose experiences and fates remained largely unexamined in the public record.
On July 17, 2025, Maryland officially acknowledged an unmarked burial ground on the facility’s grounds containing the remains of at least 230 Black children. The recognition drew renewed attention to the site and intensified pressure on state lawmakers to act.
How the bill came together
State Delegate Jeffrie E. Long, Jr. (D-District 27B) introduced and championed the legislation. The bill originally proposed appointing an independent investigator, but after committee review it was restructured around a commission model, which lawmakers determined would better serve the breadth of the investigation.
The commission will be led by the Maryland Attorney General’s office, which has prior experience overseeing investigations of similar scope. Long emphasized that the commission’s membership would include people who were formerly incarcerated in Department of Juvenile Services facilities, giving the investigation grounding in direct experience rather than institutional perspective alone.
The Department of Juvenile Services expressed support for the bill, noting that a commission drawing from surviving relatives, community members, historians, and subject matter experts would produce a more credible and transparent process than a single investigator working alone.
A parallel track in the Senate
House Bill 552 moves in tandem with Senate Bill 776, introduced by State Senator Will Smith (D-Md.-20). That bill is currently before the House Government, Elections and Labor Committee awaiting a vote. Both pieces of legislation are designed to produce a unified investigative framework rather than parallel and potentially conflicting processes.
If both bills clear their remaining legislative hurdles, the commission is expected to deliver its final report by December 31, 2027. As of March 23, HB 552 was in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.
What Long wants Black Marylanders to take from this
Long framed the bill’s passage as part of a broader willingness within Maryland’s current leadership to face uncomfortable history directly. He pointed to the presence of a Black governor, a Black House speaker, and an Afro-Latino speaker as markers of a state that has made meaningful progress, and argued that same progress creates a responsibility to examine where the state has fallen short.
His broader point was about the integrity of the historical record at a moment when, across the country, that record is under pressure. Acknowledging what happened at Cheltenham, Long suggested, is not separate from the work of getting things right. It is part of it.
The 230 children buried in unmarked graves on that property did not choose the facility, the era, or the conditions that took their lives. The commission, if it comes together as designed, would be the first formal effort by the state to understand what those conditions actually were.
