ORIGINAL ARTICLE Making #BlackLivesMatter in the Shadow of Selma: Collective Memory and Racial Justice Activism in U.S. News Sarah J. Jackson Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104, PA, USA It is clear in news coverage of recent uprisings for Black life that journalists and media organizations struggle to reconcile the fact of ongoing racism with narratives of U.S. progress. Bound up in this struggle is how collective memory—or rather whose collective memory—shapes the practices of news-making. Here I interrogate how television news shapes collective memory of Black activism through analysis of a unique moment when protests over police abuse of Black people became newsworthy simultaneous with wide- spread commemorations of the civil rights movement. I detail the complex terrain of nostalgia and misremembering that provides cover for moderate and conservative dele- gitimization of contemporary Black activism. At the same time, counter-memories, in- troduced most often by members of the Black public sphere, offer alternative, actionable, and comprehensive interpretations of Black protest. Keywords: Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights Movement, Journalism, Collective Memory, Nostalgia, Counter-Memory, Television News, Race, Protest doi:10.1093/ccc/tcab007 Introduction Director Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014), which follows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists in the planning of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, went into wide theatrical release two months before the 50th anniversary of these events. Its run corresponded with the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and its promotional lead occurred alongside the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. These events and commemorations coincided with nationwide attention to police killings and increased visibility of Black Lives Matter activists. The moment was ripe with contradiction; journalists commemorated the triumphs of the civil rights Corresponding author: Sarah J. Jackson; e-mail: sarah.jackson@asc.upenn.edu Communication, Culture and Critique 00 (2021) 1–20 V C The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalfof International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 1 Communication, Culture and Critique ISSN 1753–9129 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ccc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ccc/tcab007/6184822 by sarah.jackson@asc.upenn.edu on 25 March 2021