Artistic license to misrepresent history?

I haven’t seen the movie Selma, and I’m not particularly learned about historical facts. But I do trust the insights into Coretta Scott King’s character that are offered by Barbara Reynolds in her Washington Post article of January 19th, 2015:

The biggest problem with ‘Selma’ has nothing to do with LBJ or the Oscars – Why do we keep diminishing the legacy of Coretta Scott King?

Ms. Reynolds met Ms. King in the 1970s, when working as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She interviewed her for news articles numerous times and, in 2000, began periodically recording her accounts of her experiences. The resulting 1,000 pages of transcripts are being turned into a biography to be published later this year. I think it’s safe to say that, if Ms. Reynolds says the movie Selma misrepresents Coretta Scott King, then it does indeed misrepresent her.

Which begs the question: why? Continue reading