This article seeks to determine how and why countermemory shifts from being a fringe narrative to being a part of the U.S.'s collective narrative. We establish two complementary--and often interlocking--reasons for this shift: 1) The role of media portrayals in film and series, and 2) The impact of grassroots community-engaged public memory efforts. In the examples we study, media portrayals preceded community-engaged memory work, but these findings must be analyzed in context with the community work as part of larger rhetorical ecologies. In our research, it becomes evident that media representations can initially inspire community interest, helping groups organize and craft memory sites to shift narratives within a larger socio-political context.