Our Heroes Are Not Supporting Characters: Why the son of Vernon Dahmer Is Calling for a Boycott of 'By Any Means' Film

In a world where Mississippi mostly lives in the minds of the general public as a relic, and where so many of our heroes remain unsung, we have to be intentional about how we engage with the media that gets to exist about the place we call home.

For generations, one of the dominant narratives about Mississippi has been defined by terror: lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, violence, downtrodden Black folks, and a past the state supposedly can’t escape.

Those stories are part of Mississippi’s history. They deserve to be told, documented, remembered, and reckoned with.

But they are not the whole story.

Mississippi also has a legacy of creating freedom, joy, resistance, community, entrepreneurship, and life in spite of terror. Black Mississippians have spent generations building institutions, protecting one another, creating opportunity, organizing for political power, and imagining futures beyond the conditions imposed upon them.

Mississippi is more than the terror it produced.

That is what came to mind while watching By Any Means, a new film released September 4, 2026, by Paramount Pictures. The film is described as a crime thriller set in 1960s Mississippi and is loosely based on the story of Gregory Scarpa, a Mafia hitman who worked as an FBI informant during investigations into the murders of civil rights workers and leaders in Mississippi. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Wayne Strider, a fictional composite FBI agent, while Mark Wahlberg plays Scarpa.

At the center of the film is the 1966 murder of Vernon F. Dahmer Sr., a civil rights leader, businessman, farmer, and president of the Forrest County NAACP in Hattiesburg.

Dahmer was not simply a victim of Mississippi's racial terror.

He was a person who was actively building something. He led voter registration drives. He publicly offered to pay poll taxes for Black residents who could not afford them. He ran a successful family business and employed members of his community. He organized. He advocated for his neighbors. He believed in collective responsibility and political participation. His mantra was simple:

“If you don't vote, you don't count.”

"In his short fifty-eight years, Dahmer launched voter registration drives, and adhered to the philosophy that it was his responsibility to be his brother and sister’s keeper. Perhaps it was also his economic independence that made him a target for the Ku Klux Klan. He annexed large tracts of land, built a commercial farm of cotton, owned a sawmill, a planer mill, and a grocery store.

He hired his Black neighbors from Kelley Settlement to work for him, thereby carrying out his philosophy of being a good neighbor. The jobs he provided reduced Black flight to northern cities and strengthened the local community. Vernon Dahmer was a generous man who believed in the power of a united community. He was also a leader in the Shady Grove Baptist Church as leader of the choir and Sunday school Superintendent." - civilrightsteaching.org

On January 10, 1966, Ku Klux Klan members attacked the Dahmer family home and grocery store, firebombing the property and shooting into the buildings. Vernon Dahmer helped his wife, Ellie, and their children escape through a back window while defending the family from the attackers. He sustained severe injuries from the fire and died later that day.

Four of Vernon Dahmer’s sons, who were serving in the armed forces at the time of his murder, observe the family home burned to the ground. (Six of his seven sons served 78 years in the military). Photo by Chris McNair, courtesy of Jerry Mitchell.

That history is not incidental to the story of Mississippi. It is Mississippi history.

But what struck me while watching By Any Means was how easy it felt for the story of a Mississippi hero to become secondary to the story of the people who came into Mississippi to investigate his murder. The film introduces us to Dahmer, but we only briefly get to know the man he was.

We only see the terror.

We only see his death.

And then the story moves toward the Mafia informant and the FBI investigation.

That left me asking: How did we get an entire film about a Mafia hitman who came to Mississippi to help investigate the murders of civil rights leaders, while the Mississippi man who spent his life building power for his own community becomes a supporting character in his own story?

There is an important distinction here. The film's creators have described the project as an attempt to bring attention to a little-known chapter of American history, and the film does center a fictional Black character and the murder of Dahmer. But representation isn't only about whether a Black historical figure appears on screen.

It is also about who gets to be the protagonist.

Who gets complexity?

Who gets a backstory?

Whose motivations do we understand?

Whose heroism becomes the engine of the story?

And who is reduced to the event that happened to them?

For me, that distinction matters deeply when the place being portrayed is Mississippi. Because Mississippi is too often understood through a narrow lens of white terror and white intervention.

The story becomes: Look at what white people did here.

Or: Look at the white person who came here to help.

But what about the people who were already here?

What about the Black Mississippians who were organizing, farming, building businesses, registering voters, creating churches and schools, raising families, protecting one another, and demanding freedom before anyone outside the state decided their stories were worthy of national attention?

What about Vernon Dahmer?

What about Ellie Dahmer?

What about the people who continued building after he was killed?

Those stories matter, too. And they matter particularly now, when Hollywood continues to shape how millions of people encounter places they may never visit themselves.

When a film tells a story about Mississippi, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It contributes to the archive. It becomes part of what people believe Mississippi is.

That means Mississippians should be paying attention to who is telling our stories, whose perspective is centered, and what gets left out.

My immediate instinct after seeing the film was to find out what the Dahmer family thought.

I wanted to hear from the people who don't experience Vernon Dahmer as a historical figure, but as a father, husband, grandfather, and member of their family. That search led me to public statements from his son, Dennis Dahmer Jr., who has strongly criticized the film and called for a boycott. The Dahmer family is also asking supporters to demand that Paramount Pictures add a disclaimer to the film. Find the petition here.

Whatever your personal decision about seeing By Any Means, I think the larger conversation is worth having.

Mississippi deserves more than stories about what was done to us.

We deserve stories about what we built.

We deserve stories about how Black Mississippians created freedom inside systems designed to deny it.

We deserve stories about our organizers, farmers, business owners, artists, educators, musicians, mothers, fathers, churches, neighborhoods, movements, and communities.

We deserve to know the people who made a way when there wasn't one.

And we should be intentional about making sure those stories exist and not waiting for Hollywood to decide they're worth telling.

In the era of Hollywood deciding what Mississippi looks like to the rest of the world, perhaps our response shouldn't only be to reject the stories that flatten us.

It should be to create more of our own.

Vernon Dahmer spent his life telling Black Mississippians that their political participation mattered. His words still do. “If you don't vote, you don't count.”

That is a legacy worth remembering, not simply because Vernon Dahmer was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, but because of who he was before they killed him.

A businessman.

A farmer.

A community organizer.

A husband.

A father.

A neighbor.

A leader.

A Mississippi hero.

Mississippi is more than the terror it produced. And our stories should prove it.

The Dahmer family is asking us to support them by boycotting this film and also signing the petition to include a disclaimer before and after the film "VERNON F. DAHMER, SR. was a real person who fought (literally) & died for Black folks' Civil & Voting Rights! This movie is a FICTIONALIZED VERSION of one lesser event surrounding the investigation of his murder."

You can also preserve the legacy of Vernon Dahmer by learning more about the work he did. If you're local to Mississippi, check out this event happening September 10th at The University of Southern Mississippi, Remembering Vernon Dahmer, a documentary screening and community conversation.