As you may have gathered from the recent Honest Trailer, Nickel Boys is one of the lesser-hyped nominees for a Best Picture Oscar. The story is fictionalized, but is based on the true horrors of the Dozier School For Boys, earlier called the Florida Industrial School for Boys. The reform school opened in 1900 and operated until 2011. At first, juveniles were sentenced to the school for real crimes, but as time wore on, they could be sent there for truancy or general misbehavior.
What went unknown for almost of the school's history is the cemetery behind the school's garbage dump that held unmarked graves of the boys who died there, many of them undocumented. There are survivors around still who can tell you about the harsh physical punishments for minor infractions that included beatings, isolation, starvation, and sexual abuse. In 1996, 31 metal crosses were installed in the cemetery, but a later investigation and exhumation showed that that was far too few to represent the juveniles who died there. Read about the real school behind The Nickel Boys at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: State of Florida)