Jeb Stuart Focuses on Civil Rights in Blood Done Sign My Name

by Rebecca Pahle | Published August 3, 2010

Jeb Stuart has written such screenplays as Die Hard and The Fugitive, but for his second directorial effort (his first being 1997’s Switchback) he has chosen to focus on the North Carolina civil rights movement of 1970. Blood Done Sign My Name tells the true story of the murder of Dickie Marrow, an African American Vietnam veteran who was murdered in his hometown of Oxford, NC in 1970. The three white men who killed him were found not guilty, which enraged Oxford’s African American community and led them to march on Raleigh, NC to meet with the governor, and eventually to declare a boycott on white-owned businesses in Oxford.

Featured in the film are Ben Chavis, a black schoolteacher who becomes a civil rights activist after the murder, and Vernon Tyson, a white Methodist minister who favors the cause of integration, but faces resistance from the town’s white leaders. Stuart took the time to answer MovieMaker’s questions about the state of Hollywood today, how films can impact race relations and why he has called his film the anti-To Kill a Mockingbird.

Rebecca Pahle (MM): Much of the focus on civil rights history has been on larger stories, those of Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, that everybody knows something about. You chose to tell a less widely known story, and one that took place in the 1970s and not the 1960s. What led you to make the decision to focus on a more personal story?

JS: A couple of things. I felt like we had not had a movie that focused on the smaller heroes of the movement. Quite frankly, any story that had had been really focused on from a Hollywood stance was not really about the movement at all. It was really about good white people versus bad white people, with African Americans being props in the middle. Things like To Kill a Mockingbird, which is considered a classic civil rights story, and it’s really Gregory Peck versus the bad white people. Or Mississippi Burning, where two FBI agents come to Mississippi to solve a heinous civil rights crime, and in effect it’s really the good white people versus the bad white people. Most people who know anything about the civil rights movement would realize that the FBI really wasn’t in the business of helping the movement at all. So my feeling was that the film needed to be authentic.

By moving it to the 1970s we were also at a different stage, where a lot of black returning Vietnam vets had a different approach of the ideas of civil liberties and freedoms, and also had been trained to be experts in warfare, and it was a very different time period. Martin Luther King was now dead, Malcolm X was dead; the movement had taken a different turn. I don’t want to say a more violent turn; I think it was a more proactive black story. Hollywood loves to think of the ‘60s as being whites and blacks linking their elbows arm in arm and marching together. This was a different time period. Those things drew me to the story.

MM: You’ve called you film the anti-To Kill a Mockingbird, because in that story the white lawyer swoops in to save the day while in Blood Done Sign My Name the black characters, Ben Chavis included, are more self-sufficient. Why do you think the story of the white character saving the day exists so much in Hollywood now?

JS: I want to look at the economics of the situation. There is a larger white audience in America than black. As such, Hollywood tends to make our heroes white, as opposed to African American, in these types of stories. I think that one of the things that drew me to Blood Done Sign My Name is that there are heroes of all colors. It is important to tell the story of Ben Chavis, who marched his children out of the classroom to protest the murder and then lost his job for doing it. Then he gained a vocation; for the rest of his life he’s been a very powerful force for civil rights in this country [Chavis later became the youngest ever CEO of the NAACP]. Most people don’t even know that story, so it was important to me to find some strength in telling that particular story.

MM: Since the time period in which your movie took place, depending on who you discuss the issue with, we’ve made either a lot of progress or some or not much at all in terms of race relations. Do you think that film as a medium can help make things better in terms of race relations in this country?

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Comment by web tasarım on 2/26/10 at 3:48 am: He is a really inspirational screenwriter. I’ve seen some of his films
Comment by selo Krushinka on 4/09/10 at 12:54 am: I think it was a more proactive black story.
Comment by Vishal Arya on 4/09/10 at 7:37 am: sir i have paid my all credit card payment please revome my name from cvil
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Comment by emlak siteleri on 7/25/10 at 9:02 am: He is a really inspirational screenwriter.
Comment by chevelly on 8/06/10 at 2:57 am: I like stuart as a screenwriter. I watched The Fugitive when I had a problem with admission essays on my job.
Comment by sohbet on 8/13/10 at 4:48 pm: Everyone should have the right
Comment by yazgulu on 8/13/10 at 4:48 pm: Why not have your rights
Comment by chat on 8/13/10 at 5:56 pm: we want our civil rights
Comment by sohbet on 8/13/10 at 5:58 pm: Everyone should take the rights
Comment by chat on 8/13/10 at 6:00 pm: thanks editor
Comment by tinnitusmiracle83 on 8/26/10 at 8:41 am: I really like Jeb Stuart…
Comment by ماشى موبيل on 8/28/10 at 6:48 am: He is a really inspirational screenwriter.
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