Does SDL2 work on Beaglebone Black using DirectFB

You could try: CreateSoftwareRenderer to see if that helps. Might want to set https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_HINT_FRAMEBUFFER_ACCELERATION to 0 (disabled) with SDL_SetHint before creating the window too.

You’ll probably need some other software to enable the frame buffer access as well.
How can I customize a full-screen console background (TTY)?