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Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,

a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

When you think of the civil rights era, what comes to mind?

Do you hear the sounds of bus boycotts and sit-ins?

Maybe you think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. giving a speech.

They told us we wouldn't get here.

These are the images that history books and Hollywood have made the calling cards of an era.

And that is a pretty accurate interpretation of the time.

But missing in all that conflict and struggle is the mundane.

The quotidian, the average everyday life of black Americans simply trying to live.

And that's something director Ramelle Ross hadn't seen, the story of black people through our own eyes.

You know, Bell Hook says that the only site for resistance against the slew of images made by

other people of the black community was the Black Funny Archive.

That's Ramele Ross, director of the film, Nickel Boys. It's based on the book, The Nickel Boys,

by Colson Whitehead, a book that's sometimes been called unadaptable because of its unique

mix of perspective and metaphor.

Now, the film adaptation is nominated for two Oscars, including Best Picture.

What happened on today's one kid? I used to hang it all the time.

You don't remember?

Remember what?

The film follows the lives of two black boys, Elwood and Turner, who meet at Nickel Academy,

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