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The movie Nickel Boys, like the book upon which it is based, is set in the Florida Panhandle in the early 1960s. This period is now generally known as the “Jim Crow Era” due to the Jim Crow laws that enforced strict racial hierarchies in the American South and maintained the system of segregation that barred Black Americans from accessing public spaces and resources. The legal doctrine used to uphold these laws was “separate but equal,” though in reality, the resources dedicated to white and Black individuals were by no means equal. 

Elwood is raised in an environment that is highly stratified by race. Young black children jump off the sidewalk and into the road to accommodate a white couple as they stroll by. Black women such as Hattie, Elwood’s grandmother, perform most of the visible labor, cleaning spaces patronized by white customers. In one notable scene, a Black and white woman both enter the cigar store where Elwood works, each wearing similar dresses and making similar, parallel movements, but not interacting with one another, suggesting that Black and white Americans operate in almost separate spheres in the setting of the film. When these Black and white spheres interact, the results are often violent and tragic. Hattie notes that her father, who was found hanged in a prison cell, was likely lynched after a white woman accused him of getting in her way on the sidewalk, and other members of Elwood’s family have been similarly affected. His father, for example, could not adjust to the daily racism he experienced in the South after serving in the army, which had offered him an at least provisional sense of equality.  

However, the early 1960s were also marked by progress and change. The film is punctuated with scenes, speeches, and imagery from the Civil Rights Movement that sought racial equality for African Americans. Elwood hears the words of Martin Luther King Jr. on televisions in shop windows, on the radio, and on vinyl records, and these media clips embed the film in this historical context. The film is set in a moment at which the question of racial equality was at the forefront of public conversation across the United States. In one scene, a group of Black women watch a televised speech by King Jr. and note that their employers have attempted to ban them from speaking about the Civil Rights protests, suggesting that many white Americans feared the changes promised by King Jr. and other activists. Mr. Hill, Elwood’s teacher, is a Freedom Rider who was brutally attacked by a white counter-protester. He encourages his students to question the information in their textbooks and to educate themselves on the history of racism in America. The early 1960s, as shown in the film, were a period of rapid social transformation, poised between the Jim Crow Era and desegregation. It is this cultural climate that shapes Elwood’s ideals and inspires his vision of a more equitable and just future.  

Change, however, is slow to come to the Florida Panhandle. Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school where Black students face shocking violence and are provided with inferior supplies and accommodations, represents the resistance, across the South, to the changes called for by the Civil Rights Movement. Based on the real Florida School for Boys, which operated for over a century, Nickel Academy is the primary setting of the film. At Nickel Academy, Elwood’s ideals conflict with the widespread racism and violence he witnesses, as well as the relative submissiveness of some other students, who have become accustomed to the school’s abuses. Elwood believes that Nickel Academy can be reformed from the outside and seeks to document the illegal actions undertaken by staff. The more cynical Turner, however, argues that the school is just a more “honest” version of the outside world, as racism and violence can be found all across the nation. For Turner, then, Nickel Academy is just the United States in miniature. 

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