The founder of Maryland’s legislative Black Caucus heard whispers of a “secret cemetery” holding children’s graves in 1972, so he walked into the woods to see for himself.
Among weeds and crawling vines, then-state delegate Troy Brailey found cracked gravestones marking the burial plots of Black boys who died during the late 19th and early 20th centuries at a state juvenile detention facility with a documented history of abuse and neglect. It was called the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children.
