‘Who gets to tell a family story?’: Why Vernon Dahmer Sr.’s family is protesting the ‘By Any Means’ film

Vernon Dahmer Sr.’s family says “By Any Means” distorts the slain civil rights leader’s legacy and petitions for a disclaimer to be added.

As many movie lovers gear up to watch Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Nicole Beharie star in “By Any Means,” which debuts in theaters on September 4, one family is calling on audiences to boycott the Paramount Pictures film. 

Described as a “revenge thriller” based on a “true story,” the film follows a Black FBI agent, played by Abdul-Mateen II, investigating the murder of civil rights figure Vernon F. Dahmer Sr., portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito, in 1960s Mississippi, and his journey working with notorious mafia hitman Greg Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg). While Abdul-Mateen II’s character is fictionalized, Greg Scarpa and Vernon Dahmer Sr. were real people, which is part of why Dahmer’s descendants, Dennis Dahmer Sr., 73, and Dawn Montgomery, have pushed back against the film’s production urging producers to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the film noting that it is a “fictionalized version” of one lesser event surrounding the investigation of Vernon Dahmer Sr.’s murder. 

“If you want to make a movie like Django, that’s fine. I like Django [Unchained], Wakanda [Black Panther], Sinners, it’s all fiction… But when you take a real-life individual and use that as the base for what you are doing to give validity to what you’re doing, and these characters become bigger than the actual individual that you base it upon, you are doing a disservice to the legacy of that person,” Dennis Dahmer Sr. told theGrio. 

Vernon F. Dahmer Sr. was a successful businessman, farmer, NAACP leader, and voting rights advocate in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. Having dedicated years of his life to helping Black communities navigate the Mississippi poll taxes, Dahmer Sr. became a target of the Ku Klux Klan, who, his son says, consistently harassed him and his family. On January 10, 1966, a group of white supremacists firebombed his home. After helping his wife and children flee the home, the civil rights advocate returned to the burning home, shooting at KKK members in an effort to protect his family and defend his home. He died the following day. In the years that followed, six of the men involved in the attack were convicted for their involvement in the attack. 

“Who gets to protect your family’s legacy and who gets to tell your family’s stories? Who gets to narrate what has been done within that context?” Montgomery, a journalist and strategist and third-generation descendant of Dahmer Sr., told theGrio. “I’m the latter generation, and I understand the importance of my family’s history. I understand the importance of what this particular ancestor did.” 

“My grandmother is somebody who worked the polls for 40 to 50 years, so she worked side by side with [Dahmer Sr.] when he was registering voters and working with the Hattiesburg NAACP in South Mississippi, and did all the things. So, there are people like her that I know made sure people could vote, and our relative died because he was registering people to vote. This was our right. And then here it is, two, three generations later, we’re dealing with the fact that those rights are being erased. This administration is literally trying to wipe away a lot of the things that our ancestors died for.” 

According to Dennis, his issues with the movie date back to two to three years ago, when a producer, whom he believes was “By Any Means” producer Alex Lebovici, first approached him about making a film about his father. At the time, he recalls listening to the producer claim to honor Dahmer Sr.’s legacy before claiming that Scarpa solved the civil rights icon’s murder in the 1960s. Despite requesting additional information about the film, Dennis said he never heard anything about the project again until approximately eight months ago, when someone asked him if he was aware that a movie was being made about his dad. 

After being connected with Chester Algernal Gordon, another producer on the film, Dennis learned that the production team had been working with his sister, Bettie Dahmer, who had even brought the team to meet his mother, Ellie Dahmer. And while his mother was initially interested in the idea, Dennis, who read the production team’s script and showed it to her, told theGrio that neither he nor Mrs. Ellie Dahmer approved of the script or signed the release forms. 

“The more questions I ask, the more it becomes apparent to me,  especially after reading the script, that the movie they are making takes one small element of this murder investigation surrounding my dad, around this monster character named Scarpa, who did exist, and they basically are turning him into a superhero in this movie,” Dennis shared. “He’s like a white savior trope.” 

In the film, Wahlberg’s character, Scarpa, appears to be a pivotal figure in the quest for justice, a narrative that Dennis says “is not true.” When Vernon Dahmer Sr. was killed by the Ku Klux Klan on January 10, 1966, Dennis was less than a month away from turning 13 years old. Having a vivid memory of his father defending their home against two carloads of KKK members during an attack that was supposed to kill Vernon and his entire family, the now 73-year-old takes pride in honoring his father’s legacy. 

“If he hadn’t fought that gun battle with those folks, I wouldn’t be talking to you today. We all would have perished right in that house, every one of us.” Dennis stressed, explaining his decision not to sign the producers’ release forms. “I’m adamantly opposed to any movie that does not tell the truth about who Vernon Dahmer was. My mother refused to sign it. These movie people know this, but they’re moving on, making the movie any damn way…You’re literally standing on the grave of my daddy to enrich yourselves. It’s morally wrong and it’s repulsive.”

Understanding that the producers were going to move forward with the film based on his sister Bettie’s signed release, Dennis shared that he approached Lebovici about including a prologue to honor Dahmer Sr.’s legacy and avoid any misinterpretations of what happened to the civil rights activist. A request that, he says, was rejected in a heated text exchange, during which Dennis claims the producer urged the family to get a lawyer if they didn’t like the team’s decisions. 

After the failed prologue request, the family’s attorney, Russell Johnson, submitted a letter to Paramount Pictures and Hammerstone Studios requesting that they “contribute a reasonably substantive portion of the film’s proceeds, to the establishment of a non-profit fund dedicated to increasing voter participation and civic engagement in Vernon’s name.” 

“At the very least, to make amends for the damage that you’re doing to the legacy of Vernon F. Dahmer Sr., you can set aside some of the proceeds from this movie, okay, to be used for voter registration, voter education on why it is important to vote,” Dennis told theGrio. “Because the statement that my dad made before he died in the hospital is very true even today: if you don’t vote, you don’t count.” 

Ultimately, “By Any Means” producers agreed to put disclaimer cards at the end of the film which read, “This movie is a fictionalized version of a real-life event, the murder of Vernon F. Dahmer Sr., local civil rights activist in Mississippi, and the surrounding events. Vernon F. Dahmer Sr. died protecting the voting rights of Black Americans,” per screenshots shared with theGrio by the Dahmer family.

And while the family understands they cannot control viewers’ decisions to view the movie, Dennis encourages everyone to read and share their petition because, as Montgomery points out: “People are trying to take our culture and just do what they want to with it. And they’re doing the same thing with our history.”