In 2011, the state of Florida closed a facility known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

The following year, when forensic anthropologists discovered dozens of children's bodies buried in unmarked graves around the campus, the country finally heard the stories former residents had been trying to tell for years.

This place set up as a reform school for wayward and sometimes simply unwanted or orphaned kids had been abusing its vulnerable residents for more than a century.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. For much of its history, the school

segregated its population by race, a choice that almost by definition meant that as bad as things

were for the white students, conditions were immeasurably worse for black students.

There's been great journalism on this facility, but sometimes we gain a different kind of

understanding, more intimate and personal, through fiction, which is what happened for me when

I read Colson Whitehead's second Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys. He joined us in

2020 when the book was newly out in paperback, and now

it has been adapted into a movie directed by Ramele Ross. Just this week, Nickel Boys was nominated

for a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and it is a safe bet more awards are on the way. So this hour

we're going to listen back to my conversation with Colson Whitehead, and I do hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Colson, welcome back to think.

Hey, how do you do?

Very well, thank you.

So many people were absolutely sickened by the revelations about the Dozier School, but eventually, you know, headlines die down, people move on.

It sounds like you were not able to move on. What was it about this story that would not let go of

you? Yeah, there were a couple things. When I first, you know, it had been reported very extensively

in Florida papers, Northern Florida papers, but only occasionally, you know, made the national stage.

And so late summer of 2014, there was an update on some of the forensic examinations of the bodies in the unmarked graveyard.

And the next day, the story was gone.

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