WASHINGTON — State Delegates gathered at Cheltenham Veterans Cemetery on Tuesday morning to visit a dark part of Maryland’s history. In the woods, just behind the cemetery, headstones appear at random to mark the graves of Black boys.

The graves sit on state property, but decades of neglect and abandonment have taken their toll.

“It’s very jarring to view, especially how haphazardly they seem to be buried,” said Delegate Jheanelle K. Wilkins, who serves as Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. “I was calculating, the first one we saw was May 1888, a hundred years before I was born.”

The boys were buried by The House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Youth, a segregated state-run facility established in 1870. Records show Black boys were sent to the facility for min

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