Remembering Victims of Cheltenham
Capital News Service is examining the history of the House of Reformation for Colored Children at Cheltenham in Prince George’s County where some 230 boys died while in state custody up until 1940. This is a case study of a national tragedy: the use of the juvenile justice system to extend the mechanisms of slavery and Jim Crow well into the 20th century. The articles below represent a mix of investigations and ongoing news coverage by Capital News Service reporters of the Cheltenham episode and the state of Maryland’s response. We plan to release data and documents from our published work as well.
Associate Professor Rob Wells is overseeing this project, and please contact him with any questions at robwells@umd.edu.
Maryland youth prison hired out Black boys to farmers, factories
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once advocated for the Cheltenham boys
How CNS reported on Cheltenham
Tuberculosis plagued a Maryland Black reformatory school. Experts say deaths were preventable.
Separate and Unequal:
How two Baltimore newspapers shaped realities for Black youth at Cheltenham facility
How two Baltimore newspapers shaped realities for Black youth at Cheltenham facility
Charles Blagmond, a Baltimore Teen ‘Lost to the System’ in Cheltenham
Cheltenham inmate described violent abuse, confinement
Like hundreds of runaways before them, three young men were caught by the police and sent back to the Cheltenham School for Boys in March 1946. What awaited them was a weeklong confinement in a basement cell, no food for…
Death count at Cheltenham boys’ center was nine times that of white facility
The death count at the House of Reformation for Colored Boys at Cheltenham, a juvenile detention center whose violent past is under state investigation, was nine times the amount of its white counterpart, the House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents…
Cheltenham investigation bill moves forward with little opposition
The state-led investigation into the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center is continuing to push through the Maryland Legislature, with a revised bill advancing through the House of Delegates.
Senate clears bill to investigate deaths of Black boys at Cheltenham reform school
The Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation to probe the deaths of Black boys at a Maryland facility. The vote moves the measure forward.