An Alabama Brawl and the Power of Black Resistance

On August 5th, a frenzied brawl took shape on a Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock — sparked by a gang of white individuals beating on Damien Pickett, a Black riverboat co-captain, after he told them to move their illegally parked pontoon boat to allow a riverboat to dock. As the fight unfolded largely on racial lines, captured from various angles and posted all over social media, it is difficult to not see the connection to the greater racial-culture war that is playing out on multiple battlegrounds in the United States. Unfortunately, even in 2023, our media environment — across music, film and TV, our politics, and more — is still riddled with violent racial undertones, reflecting a durable and disturbing trend. So what happens when abstract violent ideologies manifest in the physical form? The “Montgomery boat brawl” serves as a prime example.

This moment is about more than a benign request to move a pontoon boat, and the events that followed have much deeper implications and serve as a reminder of America’s racially fraught history and present state.

The Montgomery boat brawl emerged as a recent focal point, seen in some ways as capturing and amplifying our current cultural and political zeitgeist: an America divided. While it's important to understand the event's relevance, it's just as critical to consider the context surrounding it. At first glance, this is an example of extreme callousness: a group of white aggressors taking their displeasure at being told what to do out on a Black man who was simply doing his job. But when you take a deeper look, you understand that this altercation was generations in the making.

The Montgomery riverfront was once the location of unimaginable racial trauma for thousands of enslaved Black people. In fact, during the last twenty years of the slave trade, Alabama was one of the largest slave owning states in the country, with Montgomery serving as the capital of Alabama’s slave trade. By 1860, a little over 435,000 people were enslaved in Alabama and many of them were sold in Montgomery. The very same streets where Black people were bought and sold into slavery remain central to downtown Montgomery today. So when Pickett threw his hat in the air, it was a summoning for help that surely echoed the cries of many Black people before him, one that couldn’t be ignored. And it was answered in spades, as several Black bystanders rushed to his defense.

“Collective action can play a key role in combating the limiting ways that everyone has been taught to view Black people.”

In today’s polarized American society, the Alabama brawl isn’t the only instance of our ever-present cultural divide. In fact, one can argue that the current onslaught of harmful ideology present in almost every facet of our lives — from our schools to our bodies — is just as violent as the hand-to-hand altercation that took place on that Montgomery boardwalk. Every day, we bear witness to the ways that hateful ideology, fueled by ignorance and fear, moves from the intangible space of televised culture wars to the physical realm of street fights, riots, insurrections, and worse. But if there’s one thing to learn from all of this, it’s that collective action can play a key role in combating the limiting ways that everyone has been taught to view Black people and our place in society.

Watching the group of Black strangers race to assist and defend the riverboat co-captain is a perfect illustration of how we should all react in the face of bigotry. Passersby didn’t stop to consider who Pickett was or question whether or not he was worthy of their help. They simply saw someone who could be their uncle, father, or friend being accosted and sprang into action. They recognized his humanity. So often, when a Black person is harmed by “vigilante” or even state-sanctioned violence, there is a preternatural urge to ask qualifying questions that cast blame on victims of such brutality. In this particular instance, that urge was squelched, and their swift defense prevented a terrible act of hate from becoming a tragedy.

We can use this form of collective action as a model to replicate when faced with other egregious acts and, don’t worry, it doesn’t require brushing up on your hand-to-hand combat skills. The use of social media has played a powerful role in shaping public discourse and subverting long-held cultural norms and beliefs. Though there is no doubt that traditional or mainstream media provides a lot of the framing that we use to understand society, it’s not the stalwart it once was. The one-way media proclamations of yore are now a symbiotic conversation where, on social media platforms, the voices of everyday people are amplified in aggregate, helping to provide everything from historical context or even endless laughs — shout out to Ja’Michael Phelps.

What played out in Montgomery, Alabama, serves as a small-scale example of the broader polarization happening across our country. It illustrates how violent and harmful rhetoric can cause real-world harm. But we should not feel powerless. Together, we can resist the backwards march that American society has been making. But we must understand that this is no simple task. It requires us all to commit to stand together, particularly when it comes to protecting the most disenfranchised among us, including queer people, women, folks with disabilities, and more. It requires us to make a lifelong commitment to learning and unlearning, even when it’s uncomfortable — especially when it’s uncomfortable.

But this only works if we all commit together. As civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer once said, “Nobody's free until everybody's free.” And folks might behave quite differently if they know that each person is backed by an army of strangers ready to speak out on their behalf, and push back when necessary.

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