The Nickel Boys

In 1962, a young Elwood Curtis receives for Christmas an album, Martin Luther King at Zion Hill, and through King’s words, Elwood experiences the past abuse and the future salvation of Black people. King’s words give Elwood self-esteem in a world that devalues him.

Elwood lives with his grandmother Harriet, a house cleaner at the Richmond Hotel in the Tallahassee neighborhood of Frenchtown. His parents are alive, but no longer involved in his life. While Harriet cleans rooms, the hotel kitchen staff watches over Elwood. One day, when Elwood is 12, a busboy finds a set of encyclopedias left behind in one of the rooms. Pete, a dishwasher, challenges Elwood to a dish-drying contest for sole ownership of the leather-bound reference books. The contest is a prank—something the restaurant staff does often to get Elwood to do their work for them. Elwood “wins” by a single plate. But, after dragging the books home and placing them on his grandmother’s bookshelves, he finds that only the first volume is a real book. All the rest are blank—stand-ins used by traveling salesmen, his grandmother speculates. Elwood keeps the volumes anyway, but leaves the kitchen—he finally sees the staff’s mean-spirited pranks. 

In the immediate aftermath of Brown vs. Board of Education, Elwood wonders when he will see other Black people as guests of The Richmond rather than just employees. In the meantime, White business owners in the neighborhood see Elwood as more industrious and trustworthy than most of the other boys; at 13, he begins working at Marconi’s tobacco shop and newsstand. The White Italian-American Marconi started the store after WWII as a place for Black soldiers to buy condoms and tobacco; since then, Marconi has rebranded as a more family-friendly establishment, selling candy and comic books.

Harriet keeps half of Elwood’s salary and saves the other half for Elwood’s college fund. As an employee, Elwood shows initiative, suggesting Black newspapers Marconi should keep in stock, remembering which vendors shortchanged the store, and acting as a mediator between Marconi and the neighborhood women who don’t trust him. When he has time to browse, Elwood witnesses the civil rights struggle happening across the United States in the vivid photographs of Life magazine, and longs to join the fight.

Elwood differs with his boss on the subject of shoplifting. Marconi looks the other way, resigned to kids swiping candy as normal mischief. To chase every kid who stole a candy bar, he reasons, would be bad for business; but Elwood can’t countenance boys he knows stealing from his employer. One day, he calls Marconi’s attention to two boys from the neighborhood trying to steal candy. Later that night, on his way home, they jump Elwood and beat him, to teach him a lesson. The words of Dr. King, however, give Elwood a sense of dignity when “there are small forces that want to keep you down” (27). 

Mr. Hill, Elwood’s history teacher at the all-Black Lincoln High School, is the first to acknowledge that the second-hand textbooks the students receive from the nearby White school are not only out of date, but are filled with racist slurs scrawled by White students. Hill asks Elwood and the other students to go through their books and cross out all of the handwritten nastiness with black marker. Elwood is shocked that no one has ever thought to do this before.

Hill teaches post-Civil War history with a generous helping of contemporary context, regaling his students with tales of his freedom rides and lunch counter sit-ins. The studious Elwood is a favorite among the Lincoln faculty, who for three years cast him as Thomas Jackson—the Black statesman who informs Florida’s slaves they have been freed—in the school Emancipation Play.

As the civil rights movement makes its way to Frenchtown, Elwood is eager to join, but Harriet disapproves. She knows what happens to Black people who confront the system to demand their equal share. Despite his grandmother’s prohibition, however, Elwood takes the day off work and joins a group of Florida A&M students picketing the local movie theater. In the picket line, he encounters Hill and a few Lincoln High seniors. Inspired by the social justice movement, Elwood eagerly awaits college, where he will find his place within its ranks.

Elwood’s involvement in civil rights has given him a newfound confidence, and he makes friends with Peter Coombs. Harriet deems Peter a worthy friend because “he played violin and shared a bookish bent with her grandson” (38).

That summer, Hill gives Elwood a copy of James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (a compilation of essays about race in America and Europe). Inspired, Elwood writes letters to activist newspapers, managing to get one published. At the end of the summer, Hill offers Elwood the opportunity to take free college-level classes at Melvin Griggs Technical, “the colored college just south of Tallahassee” (39), seven miles away from Frenchtown.

To get there for his first day, Elwood hitches a ride from a man named Rodney. A state trooper pulls Rodney over for driving a stolen car.