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Line of Events
Elwood Curtis’s college dream is shattered along a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he is condemned to the hell of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory deep in the Jim Crow South. He meets another ward, Turner, who has seen it all. The two black teenagers form an alliance: Turner dispensing basic survival advice, Elwood clinging to his optimistic worldview. Against the backdrop of the burgeoning civil rights movement, Elwood and Turner’s lives seem far removed from that of the Reverend Father. Martin Luther King’s Burnished Oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood struggles to hold on to his humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.