Depiction of LBJ in "Selma" raises hackles

The sparring over “Selma,” which is set for wide release on Jan. 9, has certainly taken on a populists-versus-establishmentarians tinge. In his op-ed article, Mr. Califano wrote that the Selma marches were “L.B.J.’s idea,” citing a transcript of a phone call two months before the marches in which Johnson urged Dr. King to generate white political support for a voting rights bill by seeking out “the worst condition that you run into” in the South and getting images of racist brutality widely circulated in the news media.

In a Twitter post on Sunday, Ms. DuVernay called the notion that Selma was Johnson’s idea “jaw dropping and offensive” to the “black citizens who made it so.” People, Ms. DuVernay added, should “interrogate history” for themselves. (A spokeswoman for Paramount Pictures, the distributor of “Selma,” said that Ms. DuVernay was not available for comment for this article.)

Gary May, a professor at the University of Delaware and the author of “Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy,” said the heightened rhetoric on both sides was unsurprising.

“Here you have the first film about King, and some people are coming in and saying, ‘The story is really about the white people,’ ” he said. “In historical truth, the story was really about everybody.”