BALTIMORE – Charles Elmer Blagmond was one of 243 youth who died at the House of Reformation for Colored Boys in Cheltenham, Maryland, a notorious juvenile detention center for Black boys and teens.
It’s unclear why Blagmond was detained by the legal system; hundreds of boys were rounded up on vagrancy or similar offenses. Just one year after landing in Cheltenham, Blagmond died on Nov. 21, 1931, at the House of Reformation. The death certificate said he was 19 and listed the cause as tuberculosis, an infection that took the lives of many youth at the facility.
Blagmond ended up “lost to the system,” said Cheryl Hill-Herder, a distant cousin. “There are no records of incarceration or criminal histories,” she said, reflecting on the history of her family, “just poor people trying to find a place where they could work for adequate food and shelter.”…