ANNAPOLIS — The Senate unanimously passed a bill Friday that would investigate the deaths of hundreds of Black boys at a once-segregated reform school in Cheltenham.
The bipartisan bill, which passed 45-0 with two senators absent, calls for the creation of a commission led by the state attorney general that would investigate the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, where about 230 Black boys died in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The commission’s goal would also be to promote reconciliation through acknowledgement and systemic reform, according to the bill’s text.
“These ideas and these efforts are many years in the making, and a lot of people have put in work and blood, sweat and tears to make these things happen, so hopefully we can get it across the finish line this year,” Sen. William C. Smith Jr., D-Montgomery, who sponsored the bill, told Capital News Service in January.
The House is expected to consider a companion bill introduced by Del. Jeffrie E. Long Jr., D-Calvert and Prince George’s. Long’s bill faced no public opposition at a hearing last month.
The Senate bill also had little pushback last week during a hearing in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Questions raised at the hearing focused on whether the Attorney General’s Office was the right agency to lead the investigation.
Smith, who chairs the committee, amended the bill to add the secretary of human services and the state superintendent of schools or their designees to the commission along with two people with experience in civil rights advocacy and litigation. The measure has 12 co-sponsors, including Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City.
“While this commission will not undo what happened, it can begin the work of acknowledgement, accountability and healing that they and their descendants have long deserved,” Deputy Attorney General Zenita Wickham Hurley said during the Senate hearing.
The bill is also a priority this session for the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland.
“This commission led by the attorney general is going to give us a real deep dive and an understanding of what happened, so that we can move forward and understand that history,” Smith, a member of the caucus, said at a press conference last week.
Sam Gauntt contributed to this report.