Dennis Dahmer implores filmmakers to accurately portray family patriarch
By Ivory Phillips
JA Contributing Editor
Dennis Dahmer is the last surviving son of martyred Voting Rights activist Vernon Dahmer. During an exclusive interview, he expressed his heart-felt conviction that the recently released film, entitled “By Any Means,” fails to accurately portray events surrounding his father’s death. His father succumbed to injuries sustained when the KKK attacked the Dahmer home.
During our conversation, Dahmer concentrated on the portrait painted of the investigation of the attackers, and on what needs to happen going forward to rectify the damage done both by such attacks and the film itself.
According to Dahmer, Hammerstone Studios and Paramount Pictures invested $29 million in developing the film. He believes the film only generated $16 million in ticket sales because movie-goers, especially Black ones, are fed up with movies pushing the idea that a white Savior hero came forth to save the day for Black people, including movies like “Mississippi Burning” and “Ghosts of Mississippi.”
He explained the Dahmer family requested inclusion of a prologue to the film noting: 1) Vernon Dahmer was a real person; 2) he is buried behind Shady Grove Baptist Church in Hattiesburg; 3) the movie is a fictionalized version of lesser events during the investigation of his father’s death; 4) it is the family’s hope the movie inspires people to register and vote; and 5) remembering his father’s admonition while still alive in the hospital – “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”
Disappointed that such a statement was not included with the film, it is Dahmer’s hope that such a prologue is included in any sales or leases to any screening services contracting with Hammerstone Studios or Paramount Pictures.
Dahmer points to major distortions and dishonor, including depiction of a Black FBI agent and a mobster hit man led the investigation to a conclusion that resulted in a conviction. He contends the focus on those fictionalized actions distract from his father’s work and the real struggle for voting rights that were occurring at that time. As sources for the truth about those times and events, Dahmer recommends, “Killed by the Klan” by film maker Charles Stewart and the book “Race against Time,” by Jerry Mitchell.
Dahmer also encourages people to contact Hammerstone Studios and Paramount Pictures regarding the distortions and how to gain an understanding that more needs to be done to reflect that history more accurately.
In the matter of making further amends, Dahmer has also contacted Hammerstone Studios and Paramount Pictures about using money from the movie to promote and carry on the voter activism work of Vernon Dahmer and other civil rights leaders. The Dahmer family is requesting a Vernon F. Dahmer Sr. Voter Activism Fund be established with part of the movie’s gross proceeds. This money should be managed and distributed by a third party organization, not the Dahmer family, for distribution to legitimate groups currently doing voter activism work.
He also said the Dahmer family requests the public to send e-mails to both Hammerstone Studios and Paramount Pictures mentioning the movie by name and requesting they negotiate in good faith per the letter sent to them by the Dahmer family lawyers. Here are two e-mail addresses that can be used for that purpose.
production_operations@paramount.com
lebovici@hammerstonestudios.com
Dahmer is concerned that communication on this matter is circulating too slowly and in too small a circle for the job that must be done. Because of that concern, he asks emails be sent to the film makers as soon as possible.
