Grass over old tree stumps

Remove as much of the wood chips as you possibly can and then cover with good dirt. Scott's lawn soil is a good choice. At that point you have 3 options: let it occur naturally, seed with centipede, or sod with either.

I removed a tree, and left the stump dust in the space. It took about 4 years for the ground stump "dust" to decompose enough to allow sod to grow over the spot. The sod just kept dying.

As I understand it, the decomposition process releases gas/heat, and it is not a good environment to allow the grass to grow.

So, to reinforce the suggestions here...remove quite a bit of the ground stump, and make sure there is a substantial layer of good dirt under your sod/seed.

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Would it make usable mulch

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yes
and its free

An old redneck relative of mine would get a half chimney of charcoal started and dump it in the middle of a stump. Let them quit burning and get to the glowing phase. The hot coals wouldn’t really get a fire going with a ground stump, but it would smolder for a while and reduce it down by at least half. Enough to where it sank more into the ground then he’d take a wheel barrow full of dirt over the top.

I fought this for 2 years..finally have some grass filling in this year, although its the one spot in my yard that isn't fully st. aug. I had to just let it grow in naturally.

I also fought some serious fungus issues in the area. Seemed like fungicide would barely make a dent. Good luck.

If i were to do it again, as stated above, remove all the wood chips and bring in dirt!

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An old redneck relative of mine would get a half chimney of charcoal started and dump it in the middle of a stump.

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This is probably not a terrible idea at all. You can just get some cheap charcoal and dump the whole bag on there. Let it all burn down over night or what have you, then throw some dirt on the next day.

The charcoal idea generally is done with actual stumps. But doing it to a ground stump makes even more sense IMO.