The Real-Life School — And Horrors — Behind ‘Nickel Boys’

RaMell Ross’ newest film Nickel Boys tells the story of the friendship of Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) as the two navigate a harsh Florida reform school in the 1960s. Based on the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, the film has been praised by critics for its artful adaptation of Whitehead’s book, and how it uses a masterful combination of aspect ratio and POV camera shots to make viewers feel like they’re looking out through the eyes of the boys; Rolling Stone’s film critic David Fear called it a “radical work of art that channels a tsunami of radical empathy.” But few people know the history — and horror — of the real-life reform school both the book and film are based on: the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. 

The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, also known as the Dozier School, first opened in Marianna, Florida in January 1900. What was meant as a home for children involved in minor crimes like truancy and theft evolved into a one-stop-shop for kids considered the throwaways of society: so-called delinquents, kids with emotional issues, and even orphans who couldn’t find places in overcrowded homes. The 1,400-acre school had several names throughout its history but maintained its purpose as a place for criminal youth. Allegations of abuse began almost immediately, but it was the boys who attended in the late 1950s and 1960s who accused school administration and wardens of sexual and physical abuse, beatings, and torture. The discovery of dozens of unmarked graves on the school grounds in 2012 finally got Florida officials to believe the claims of former students. 

Jerry Cooper was sent to the school in 1961 at the age of 16 after police found him with a Marine driving a stolen car. Cooper was charged with theft alongside the adult and sent to the Dozier school rather than prison. “We had many, many boys who was there for smoking in school, that were incorrigible,” Cooper told NPR in 2012. “We weren’t bad kids. We might have needed help in some respect. But that wasn’t the place to find it, I’ll tell you that right now.”

‘Brutal beatings’

Cooper and hundreds of Dozier students accused school wardens of torturous abuse over minor infractions, like whippings, beatings, forced labor, and medical neglect. According to Cooper, he was once woken up at 2 a.m. by staff and taken to a small building on the grounds known as the “White House.” There, he said, he was tied to a bed by his feet and beaten with a leather strap until he lost consciousness. “You didn’t know when it was coming,” Cooper added. “These were not spankings. These were beatings, brutal beatings.” Cooper died from cancer in 2022, but before his death, he became the leader of the White House Boys, a group of Dozier alumni determined to get recognition from the government for the school’s atrocities. Over 400 former Dozier students — now in their sixties and seventies — testified to Florida lawmakers as early as 2010 about abuse they experienced firsthand. 

Unmarked Graves 

Throughout Dozier’s century-long history, the school was investigated multiple times by state officials and authorities, including the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The school was permanently closed in 2012. But the sale of its land, and an investigation from a team of forensic anthropologists, found at least 55 unmarked graves, and 27 additional potential resting places of deceased students, according to the New York Times. While a fire and a flu epidemic killed at least 10 boys, many others who died while at the school had their cause of death listed as accidental, illness, or reasons that contradict the accounts of boys who say they saw their fellow friends and classmates die from beatings. Researchers believe that over 100 students died while attending the school, and there are graves that have yet to be recovered. 

It took until 2017 for survivors of the school to receive an official apology from Florida lawmakers. “I cannot say with enough heartfelt remorse that it’s taken this long for a legislature, with all the evidence that is before us, to come forth and apologize for what has to be one of the blackest moments on our history,” Richard Corcoran, Florida’s speaker of the house, said at the time. And in June of this year, Florida Governor Ron De Santis signed a bill creating a $20 million restitution program for Dozier School victims. But for former students who are still alive, the memory of their time at Dozier remains. 

“Daily, that pain is still with me,” Richard Huntly, leader of a group for Black Dozier survivors, told the New York Times. “I’m 77 years old now. That lives with me daily. I can’t help it.”