As Lucia McBath sat in a Utah theater Saturday at the premiere of the movie about her son’s murder, she realized she wasn’t watching it as a mother.
She found herself being drawn into “3½ Minutes” like a juror, watching the Jordan Davis story unfold on the screen.
It was like being behind the scenes of her own life, she said.
McBath had seen the rough cut of Marc Silver’s documentary, but sitting in a packed theater at the Sundance Film Festival was surreal.
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She had lived the story since November 2012. Since the night Michael Dunn sprayed 10 bullets into a car that Jordan and three of his friends were in.
“Even though it’s been your experience for the last two and a half years, to see your life on the screen on display before the world is nerve-racking,” she said.
That experience has included McBath and Jordan’s father, Ron Davis, traveling the country to talk about tighter restrictions on guns, Stand Your Ground laws and racism, particularly as it affects young African-American males. Davis believes the film will boost their efforts.
McBath said many people told her the film would create critical discussions about those issues.
“Everyone said it (the film) is going to help make changes. It’s going to happen,” McBath said.
Davis said he told Silver he had done a service to African-American children across the country.
“I told him, ‘I love you for doing that,’” Davis said.
John Phillips, a Jacksonville attorney who has represented Jordan’s parents since a few days after the shooting, said the film’s impact depends on how widely it is distributed.
He said if the movie can be screened in Jacksonville, he will pay for it.
Phillips said what he’s learned since being involved in the case is young black males rarely get the benefit of the doubt.
“That’s the problem with where we are at,” said Phillips, who also spent the weekend at Sundance.
He described the film as the “beautiful telling of the life and death and essentially the rebirth of Jordan Davis.”
Some in the audiences over three nights asked how the parents had the strength to fight so hard for so long.
To McBath, the answer is simple: Jordan would expect them to battle for change.
She knows he would say, “You’ve got to fight. You’ve got to fight.”
The advocacy work allows McBath to also be a mother, again, of sorts. She’s known as “Mama Lucy” to countless young males across the country she’s met in her travels to change hearts and minds.
“I still need to be a mother. I still want to be a mother,” she said. “I’m still getting a chance to.”
And while that’s helping her heal, she desperately misses Jordan.
The sound of the door slamming as he came in and out of her home.
Him asking for $10 so he could go to the mall or get something to eat.
And Jordan playing practical jokes on her. “I was so gullible,” McBath said. “I fell for it every time.”
McBath said her son had been the victim of racism several times in his life, including being punished for doing the same things as his white classmates in a private Christian school he attended and being called a “gay black boy.”
That led her to homeschool Jordan from fourth to eighth grade. He was a senior at Wolfson High School when he was killed.
Both McBath and Davis liked additions Silver made after the rough cut.
For McBath, it’s the expansion of screen time for Jordan’s friends, who have grieved with the family. The teenagers, she said, were able to show who Jordan was through their eyes.
For Davis, it’s a couple of scenes. Silver added footage of waves crashing at the Jacksonville Beach Pier, a special place for Davis and his son. It was their favorite spot and it’s where they took Davis’ father for his last look at the beach before he died in 2005
The other is at the end of the film, showing Davis watching a video on Jordan’s computer of the teenager dancing.
As Jordan was seen dancing on the screen, moviegoers could see his father bopping his head to the music.
To Davis, it was like him saying, “We got justice, Jordan.”
A perfect ending for the story.
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