Was Lyndon B. Johnson a civil rights mastermind, or a reluctant follower pulled along by activists led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

The question has long been a matter of contention, even flaring up in the 2008 presidential primary battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

And now, it has also come to another hard-fought political campaign, the Oscar race, once again raising the fraught question of who makes history — and who gets to write it.

The new film “Selma,” directed by Ava DuVernay, has won rave reviews and awards buzz for its depiction of the tense maneuvering surrounding the protests in that small town in March 1965, as Dr. King (played by David Oyelowo) contended with racist authorities in Alabama as well as factions inside the civil rights movement.

But it has also drawn some sharp criticism for its depiction of Johnson as a laggard on black voting rights who opposed the marches and even unleashed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to stop Dr. King’s campaign.

The charge began on Dec. 22, three days before the movie’s release, when Mark K. Updegrove, the director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, wrote an article in Politico saying that the film was trying to “bastardize one of the most hallowed chapters in the civil rights movement.” A few days later, Joseph A. Califano Jr., a former top domestic aide to Johnson, issued another salvo, in The Washington Post, accusing the filmmakers of deliberately ignoring the historical record.

The criticism of the film’s depiction of the president has come not just from Johnson loyalists, but from some historians who said they admired other aspects of the film.