Every so often, a novel comes along that asks us to reflect back on the past. Though fictional, these historical books are often based on non-fiction. They become not only literature but learning lessons as well.
Recently I read the 2019 novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Below is a synopsis of the story followed by my thoughts on the relevance of the book.
The Nickel Boys
The Nickel Boys tells the story of a reform school in the pre-civil rights era Southern U.S.A. where the word reform really meant submission if you wished to survive. It is based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida.
It is a powerful account of a sordid history that many people prefer to forget or overlook.
While people claimed that the institution “Nickel Academy” was a school for wayward boys, it was actually nothing more than a concentration camp.
In this historical fiction novel, the Nickel Academy, long shuttered, is about to be razed for redevelopment. The discovery of graves in an area known as Boot Hill raises eyebrows and opens an investigation into what actually happened at the Nickel Academy in its past.
The story focuses on the main character, Elwood Curtis, a promising young black man, who hitchhikes a ride to school to avoid walking seven miles. Elwood doesn’t know the driver and is unaware he’s riding in a stolen car. The police stop the driver, and both he and Elwood are arrested.
Unable to prove his innocence, Elwood is sent to Nickel Academy to be reformed. Elwood, a non-violent follower of Dr. Martin Luther King, makes every attempt to accept his punishment and become a better person. At Nickel Academy, they subjected him to brutality and sexual abuse, all intended to show him the way to betterment. In the end, it becomes a matter of survival.
As the book progresses, it adopts a mysterious temperament as it leads the reader into a “What will happen next?” mind frame.
The Nickel Boys received a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as other awards, for its candid viewpoint on segregation, civil rights, and the history of the U.S.
My Take On It
Even though Nickel Academy didn’t exclusively target black males, they also abused poor whites, this story focuses on the segregation and racial inequality that blacks in the South experienced before civil rights.
I liked it because of the historical content. Few people alive today remember first-hand the cruelty of racial segregation in the U.S. — most often, towards blacks — and the battles fought for equal rights for all oppressed people.
Racial segregation was real. Growing up in Chicago, I thought I knew about segregation. Yet, in Chicago, I had never experienced “whites-only” bathrooms or restaurants with “whites-only” dining rooms. I never encountered buildings that restricted entry to only white people. Segregation in Chicago meant redlining, a more subtle way of segregating through financial discrimination. We lived in different neighborhoods, but we sat next to each other on the bus.
I experienced far more extreme segregation on a family vacation in 1962. We were traveling by car from Chicago to Florida. Our route took us through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, where most gas stations had “whites-only bathrooms”, and many restaurants and stores would not serve blacks. The poverty I witnessed in the black sections of towns in those southern states made Chicago’s slums look like luxury accommodations.
The author of The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead, does a fair job of showing the inequality that divided the world at that time. Of course, it is hard to fully understand the mistreatment of black people when you are observing it from a “whites only” dining room. The book The Nickel Boys does its best to close that gap at least a little.
But racial segregation isn’t the only lesson Whitehead explores. It is about teaching and accepting values that are fundamentally wrong simply because “that’s the way we do it here.”
Summary
Novels like The Nickel Boys often take on the pretext of an exposé. They teach us not to be complacent and just accept history without changing it. The message is clear. If you know something is not right, looking the other way is not a solution.
If you are interested in a well-written, sometimes gut-wrenching, historical fiction, The Nickel Boys is a very well-written narrative that should be on your “to-be-read” list.
The movie version of the Nickel Boys premiered on August 30, 2024 and became widely available on Amazon Prime Video and MGM+ on February 24, 2025. I recommend the book.
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