THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead (Fleet books, 2019)
“Be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer; and one day we will win our freedom” . The defiant words of Martin Luther King speak to Elwood Curtis.
An album of speeches by the great man at Zion Hill was the only album he possessed; a Christmas gift from his Grandmother in 1962. MLK put ideas in the young coloured boy’s head and fired the determination to study and, if need be, to suffer to make something of himself. A natural curiosity and a thirst for knowledge meant Elwood excelled at school and great things seem to lie ahead. The chilling prologue to this novel gives fair warning that a harsher destiny lies ahead.
After being convicted for the ‘crime’ of being an unwitting passenger in a stolen car he is sent to the Nickel Academy for juvenile offenders.This is a work of fiction but the events of state sponsored child abuse he experiences and witnesses there are inspired by the true story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida.
In both, The White House is the building used to administer savage floggings to boys deemed to be in breach of the school’s rules. If you read the moving men’s stories on the official website, you’ll see that the abused were only those of color and that these beatings were vicious acts of cruelty rather than to instill discipline. As the website statement on behalf of the victims states: “The physical pain, mental anguish and terrifying fear will live with us until we die”.
Many who were taken ‘out back’ never returned and were buried in unmarked graves like nameless war victims. Their parents or guardians were told that they had absconded. Due to the constant threat of these, often fatal, beatings there was no need for walls or barbed wire. From the outside the centre gave the impression of being a centre of reform and education to put wayward youths back on the correct path.
Elwood is initially fooled into believing he could ‘graduate’ and gain early release but soon learns the brutal reality. His friendship with the more streetwise Turner is at the heart of the story and their warm-hearted camaraderie helps to put a human face on what could otherwise have been just a tale or horror and a catalogue of atrocities.
Although Whitehead’s story is focused on the black boy’s wing of the ‘school’, the sufferers and survivors are not exclusively coloured. The novel is written from a black man’s perspective although since the insitution “magnified and refined the cruelty of the world” , it is never in doubt that the abusers are guilty of crimes against humanity regardless of skin color. One general statement applies to all the inmates: “The Nickel Boys were fucked before, during and after their time at the school, if one were to characterize the general trajectory”.
This moving tale is a reminder that although Martin Luther King spoke truth to power over half a century ago we are still waiting for the “day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.
Without preachifying or sensationalizing, Colson Whitehead’s compelling, and skillfully constructed story is a moving plea for justice and humanity. He is aware that the events at this hideous ‘school’ speak for themselves and knows that the very fact that such institutions are allowed to exist is proof enough of a system rotten to the core.
