Illuminating Shadowed Histories: Centering Black Women's Activism in Selma

The 2015 wide release of Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014) for the anniversary of the march, alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, serves as a provocative reminder of our history in the present day. Through the film, Ava DuVernay revives the spirit of triumph over oppression while also illuminating the often shadowed histories of the black women whose efforts influenced the foundations of the civil rights movement. In this essay, I use textual analysis to examine the recreation of historical events in Selma and its representations of Coretta Scott King, Diane Nash, Amelia Boynton, Annie Lee Cooper, and the four little girls who lost their lives in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. I also introduce historical accounts of the movement that correspond to DuVernay's inclusion of these women. Through the deconstruction of the singular-hero narrative of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., DuVernay importantly reconstructs the narrative of the 1965 civil rights march from Selma and foregrounds the work of these too often overlooked heroines.