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News — In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Nickel Boys,” Colson Whitehead offers a powerful fictional account of life in the notorious real-life Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida. The book was made into a film that’s up for a Best Picture Oscar this year.

The juvenile reform school and the horrors the boys experienced at Dozier are also the subject of research soon to be published by Furman University Anthropology Professor Kaniqua Robinson.

Kaniqua Robinson, assistant professor of anthropology, is writing a book about Dozier School survivors.

As an applied cultural anthropologist, her focus is on race, memory and the criminal justice system. Her research into Dozier, which she began as a graduate student, is based on Dozier archives, written accounts of boys who were sent there and interviews with the formerly incarcerated.

“I saw two churches on the campus and wanted to know how religion was used as a form of social control,” Robinson says of her initial involvement in the project.

“Then as information came out specifically about the abuse that happened to (the boys),” she adds, “I wanted to know not only how we are memorializing the deceased, but the living who were formerly incarcerated at Dozier. How are we remembering their experiences?”

Boys at the school were subjected to extreme physical and mental abuse, including horrific beatings, a sweat box reminiscent of slavery, forced labor and severe overcrowding, she says, similar to scenes that are portrayed in the Nickel Boys novel and movie.

And because there were more Black youth, and they were subjected to more abuse, she says, she’s focusing on the Black experience at Dozier in the 1960s – still part of the Jim Crow South – to gain a holistic understanding of the past.

“It was not a race-neutral experience happening there,” she says. “(I’m looking at) how were their experiences different and what made them more vulnerable, and how as Black youth they were vulnerable to racial inequality and how it was a part of the incarceration system.”

For instance, was the incarceration of Black youth meant for reform, or as another means of getting free labor, she asks, adding that their experiences more closely mirrored the correctional system than a reform school.

“Black youth were never meant to be reformed in this system,” she says. “They conceived the idea that Black people were inferior … that they were ‘less than.’ And their sentences were often extended. They wanted more labor.”

Robinson says it’s important to document the testimonies of those still living, especially given efforts to silence the Black experience at Dozier.

“Walking the campus with someone who shared their experiences (with you) … can get emotional,” she says. “You could see how they felt, even though they left so long ago, and the impact it had on their lives, the trauma level.”

Indeed, she says, the ceilings still bear the marks from where they were struck by the whips used to beat the boys.

“We need to do more research into the juvenile justice system,” she says.

At Furman, Robinson teaches several classes in anthropology, including Introduction to Anthropology and Anthropological Theory, which focuses on understanding the world’s cultures and societies. Some of her classes relate to her Dozier research as well, she says.

While Robinson has already published a scholarly article on Dozier, she says her current research will be presented in a book due to her publisher in July.

Although no Furman students were involved in her Dozier research, Robinson says an upcoming project that focuses on the preservation and erasure of Black cemeteries in the Greenville area will include Furman students. Along with researching archival information, she says, they will visit cemeteries in Black communities to better understand those communities and whether the erasure of their cemeteries was intentional or happened through neglect.

Whitehead’s book and the movie “Nickel Boys” aren’t part of Robinson’s research, but she says they are important in helping the public understand what the Black youth endured at Dozier.

“I understand it’s a fictional movie, but it is grounded in research on the school,” she says. “I appreciate that it will generate new interest into the stories of Dozier’s victims.”