If Tennesee Williams wrote Romeo and Juliet, you would have a story that rises from the life story of a white, racist Polk County phosphate worker who was Chip Norman's great-grandfather.

Norman grew up all over the county: a child of Lake Wales, a teen of Winter Haven, a young adult of Haines City. His family has been ingrained in the county's lifeblood phosphate business since the late 1800s. A powerful story from one of the years between 2012 and then involving his great-grandfather compelled him to find a way to share it.

Norman started a 'Kickstarter' campaign that is nearing a planned short film's bare minimal goal of $9,600. "Kickstarter has really helped us by featuring [it] as a 'Staff Pick'," Norman said. The short is being developed into a feature-length film that would be based in his great-grandfather's story, using the "Romeo and Juliet, if Tennessee Williams had written it" pitch.

"The film we're making depicts a true story that goes back to the phosphate company town of the 1940s."

Mulberry.

Much like the other small towns in the south Polk County area -- Frostproof, Fort Meade, Bartow, Alturas, Bowling Green, Wauchula -- Mulberry exists and survives along with the mining and production of phosphate. The football stadium at Mulberry High School is even named for the industry: the Phosphate Bowl.

The 1940s Polk County was as a rural and southern as any town in the Deep South of Mississippi or Alabama, from a cultural, ethnic and geological stand. "It's a very interesting setting," Norman said. "Most people wouldn't realize this is in Florida. It looks like the surface of the moon." The companies had been scooping up the phosphate material as the world realized the substance was an excellent fertilizer and product that could be used in thousands of products around the world. One of the largest concentrations of the material in the world lie in the mineral-rich Peace River Valley.

Unlike many across the nation, Norman's great-grandfather, Harlen J. Norman, was gainfully employed during the Great Depression with an unbelievably good and steady position in the little town's burgeoning, booming phosphate mines. Life wasn't easy, but he had a job that paid and he had it steady, along with a group of other hardworking white men.

The images of the story in his head are figments of Norman's imagination, but the anecdotes and stories told to him as a child growing up still surrounded by the Norman family's were and are all too real. "Our family is so into the phosphate industry, so you hear the stories," he said. Family members told the child stories they struggled with, because "honestly, although he did a terrible thing, it's kind of hard for my family, because they remember him as a kind loving man, but there was another side to him. Essentially, he was a very racist man," Norman said. "He wasn't educated because his father pulled him out of school in third grade to work."

The washer foreman at International Agriculture Corporation was used to working with only white men -- all he knew was working with white men -- and that smaller world within the little town's small world would be blown away when one day Harlen J. Norman was informed one of his white workers would be replaced with a black man.

When black WWII veteran Clarence Barnes showed up for work on his first day in 1946, Harlen J. Norman, foreman, was none to happy with a black man replacing his white worker. Though the man was real, the name Clarence Barnes was created. The man's real name is not known. "I think about the black miner to show up for work. That's the only work they could get. You go up and your boss tries [to do this] and it's only because the color of your skin," he said.

His great-grandfather had a plan in store for the black man causing rift in his world; a plan to make an example out of him as the men stood next to a dragline and one of the thousands of pits that then and to this day speckle the land. It may have looked like any other Mayberry, but the story shows a small world far away in Mulberry. "He showed up to work, really, with the wrong melanin count."

The young filmmaker told the rest of Harlen J. Norman's story, but asked what came next not to be shared. He's making the story a film to tell in detail the rest of a cultural and racial rift he's none to sure still doesn't quietly exist in pockets of old Florida. "When I heard it, it really shocked me as a kid," Norman recalled. "I felt that racism was a way for him to compensate for his lack of education."

They were strong words for a southern man, calling his own blood ignorant. Though most of his family is supporting him as he tries to tell what is their family story, some are still in an older world where prejudice still clouds the mind -- right or wrong. "I've already gotten emails from my family saying I've disgraced the family name, but I don't care. I have to tell a story," he said. "By looking into the past, I think we are really going to be telling the truth about the present."

Though not in the flat and outright ways in which his great-grandfather acted, Norman feels racial prejudice still exists in many ways in the area. Though he's seen it with his own eyes, an anecdote shared by the man to play the protagonist, Miami-born actor Wester Joseph, reminded him of different challenges he, as a white man, faces as he works hard to make it in his world: "His mother told him that as a black man, he's still going to have to work two times harder if he wants to be successful in this world," Norman said. "And he has. He's about to take off as an actor." Wester recently made his break-out acting debut as Connell Lambert in director Billy Bob Thornton's upcoming film 'Jayne Mansfield's Car'.

In a video posted online, Joseph said he greatly admired Barnes' character in the short film and found parallels to his modern life growing up in the South. "I also felt it was very important that we look at maybe the more unsavory parts of our past, so it can help us shine a more positive light on our present."

Norman and fellow producers have reached out to phosphate companies that dominate the area, but have been met with a cold shoulder. Norman heard through the grapevine a person on a phosphate development council only said, "We know about him," he said with a flip. "We've been totally closed off by them." He doesn't necessarily think the companies have remained silent to the film story because its racial issues. "I guess they are just so cautious of ambush journalism they just say nothing, you know?"

He has no ill-will toward the phosphate industry. "We just want to tell the truth."

Veteran actor and writer Ron Clinton Smith got on board with the film because "he felt we were telling a story that really meant something to him." Smith came to the film because of a passion for civil rights, Southern culture and history. The rest of the cast, crew and support staff includes many Polk County and central Florida natives: Jason Hedges, Letecia Clark, Laurence Weeks, Sean McDaniel, J.B. Roe, Josh Tippery, Kyle Cronkin, Vishal Agarwala, Richard A. Fifer.

In a bit of a beg to the reality of funding a small independent film, Norman posted a plea on the Kickstarter campaign's website: "If we fail to reach our $9,600 goal by the deadline, all pledges will be canceled and no funds will be charged to your account. Sadly, this would also mean the loss of a terrific little film..."

"It's a story that we're really invested in. People care about stories of pride and perseverance in the face of adversity."

While the online fundraising campaign ends Monday, July 16, at 1:39 p.m., the film is accepting any type of monetary or other help. "The $9,600 is the bare minimal. If we lose a nickel, we'll probably cry," he deadpanned.