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Nickel Boys is filmed from the first-person perspective of Elwood, an academically gifted Black teen who grows up Tallahassee, Florida, in the early 1960s, during a period known as “Jim Crow era” due to racist laws that enforced segregation in the American South. Scenes of Elwood’s childhood are mixed, in a montage-like manner, with clips from the news and other media, including speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and updates on the NASA space program. Elwood goes to school, reads comic books, works at a cigar shop, and goes on dates with a girl, all while being subjected to acts of everyday racism.  

Elwood is raised by his grandmother, Hattie, who works as a hotel cleaner. Years earlier, Hattie’s father died in a prison cell in what was likely a lynching, or an extra-judicial execution. His schoolteacher, Mr. Hill, is a “Freedom Rider” who has fought for civil rights for African Americans. Mr. Hill encourages Elwood and his classmates to identify the racist biases in their history textbooks. One day, Mr. Hill notifies Elwood that the Melvin Griggs Technical School, an HBCU, or historically Black college, just south of Tallahassee, has begun offering classes for high-achieving high school students such as Elwood. Elwood is doubtful at first, as his family cannot afford to pay for classes, but Mr. Hill assures him that the classes are free.  

Later, Elwood hitchhikes to Melvin Griggs, accepting a ride in a car that he does not know is stolen. When a police officer pulls over the driver, Elwood is arrested as an accomplice. Despite Hattie’s attempts to explain what happened to the police sergeant, Elwood is sent to the Nickel Academy, a reform school.  

At Nickel Academy, Spencer, the superintendent, informs the Black students that they can graduate from the school through good behavior, though they start at the bottom level, as “grubs.” The school, Elwood learns, is segregated, and white students enjoy greater rights and privileges. Black students, in contrast, live in dilapidated facilities and receive a poor education. A mixed-race student of Mexican descent, Jaimie, is moved between the white and Black dormitories, as the school authorities are not sure where to place him.  

Students at the school are hired out to work on local orange groves as convict laborers, a source of profit for the school. Elwood befriends another Black student named Turner. In one notable scene, the camera’s perspective changes to that of Turner, allowing the audience to see Elwood clearly for the first time. One day, Elwood attempts to defend a stuttering student from bullies and is consequently beaten and knocked out. When he regains consciousness, Blakeley, an employee of the school who is responsible for the Black students, blames Elwood, the stuttering boy, and the bullies for the fight, promising to report them to Spencer. That night, Blakely and Spencer enter the dorm and take Elwood and the others to another building on the campus. There, Spenser brutally whips the students. 

Decades later, an adult Elwood reads about the Nickel Academy on his computer and feels distraught. He has started his own moving company and lives in New York.  

Back in 1962, Elwood wakes up in a hospital bed at Nickel Academy. Hattie has traveled to the school to visit him, but she is informed that Elwood is unable to see visitors. By coincidence, she runs into Turner and asks him to deliver a letter to Elwood. From here on, the film switches back and forth from the perspectives of Turner and Elwood. Turner fakes illness to visit Elwood at the school hospital and tells him that, despite the brutal beating he received, he was still “lucky” not to be sent to “Hell,” a sweatbox on the school grounds from which some students never return. While Elwood rails against the injustice of the school’s policies, Turner insists that Elwood must be more realistic.  

Turner and Elwood accompany Harper, a white employee of the school who has recently been drafted to the Vietnam War, as he sells surplus supplies meant for the Black students. They also help out the wife of the largely absent director of the school, Mrs. Hardee, by working on her house and garden. She treats them with relative kindness, donating a box of books to the Nickel Academy library and allowing them to use her pool, though she also exploits their labor for personal benefit. Other students at the school, the film implies, are sexually abused by staff.  

Around Christmas, the students and staff watch a boxing match between a Black and white student. Previously, Turner and Elwood witnessed Spencer instruct Griff, the Black student, to throw the match, losing deliberately in the third round. However, Griff wins the match, to Spencer’s chagrin, and it is implied that Spencer has him killed that night.  

In the 1980s, Elwood reads online that investigators have found multiple unmarked graves at Nickel Academy. Back in the 1960s, Hattie visits Elwood and informs him that she raised $300 for a lawyer to appeal Elwood’s conviction, but the lawyer left town with her money. Turner apologizes to Elwood for hiding Hattie’s earlier letter, and Elwood forgives him. Elwood later reveals to Turner that he has documented abuses at Nickel Academy in his journal, but Turner responds angrily, noting that his actions have jeopardized both their lives, as those who run the school would sooner kill them than admit to wrongdoing. Their disagreement drives a wedge between them.  

In the 1980s, Elwood meets Chickie Pete, a former student of Nickel Academy, at a bar. The two talk about the past, including the fates of various other former students at the school. When Chickie Pete asks Elwood about Turner, however, Elwood is evasive in his responses and leaves shortly after. At home, he finds that more and more unmarked graves have been found at Nickel.   

In the 1960s, many of the students at Nickel are pleased by the improved food that they receive while the school is being inspected, but Elwood refuses to be appeased and tries in vain to contact the inspectors. Turner, surprisingly, promises to pass on Elwood’s notebook to the inspectors. However, the inspectors merely inform the staff at Nickel, and Jaime informs Turner that they plan to kill Elwood, whom they have locked in the sweatbox. Turner breaks Elwood out of the sweatbox and the two run away from Nickel, even though Turner previously claimed that he would only ever make the attempt solo.  

Eventually, the Nickel staff catches up to them, and Harper shoots Elwood, who was weakened by his time in the sweatbox, while Turner escapes. Turner’s journey away from Nickel is intercut with footage from the NASA space program, the lynching of African American men in the south, children playing, and other images. He reaches Harriet and informs her of Elwood’s death, to which she responds at first with tearful denial. Later, amid a montage of other images, Hattie’s obituary reads that she passed away at 80 years old and was predeceased by her only grandchild.  

A New York state driver’s license bearing Elwood’s name alongside Turner’s face reveals that Turner appropriated Elwood’s identity after his death, likely to avoid being a “fugitive” from the law. Decades later, as more information comes out about the widespread abuse and even murder at Nickel, Turner, still using the name Elwood, thinks of his late friend before deciding to join other former Nickel Academy students in testifying publicly to the crimes he witnessed there.

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