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Alabama riverfront brawl videos spark a cultural moment about race, solidarity and justice

FILE - The Harriott II riverboat sits docked in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023. A riverfront brawl occurred on Aug. 5 when a crew member was punched for trying to move a pontoon boat that was blocking the riverboat from docking. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler, File)

FILE - Police carry off two men who were part of a sit down group at Montgomery, Ala. on March 11, 1965. Hundreds had marched on the Capitol yesterday and several attempted to continue it today. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - A white group, the Organization for Better Government, carries a Confederate flag as they march away from the capitol in Montgomery, Ala., March 18, 1965. They halted within 25 feet of racial pickets, had several speeches then marched off again. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Evelyn England gives a tour of the First White House of the Confederacy to school students on April 27, 2018 in Montgomery, Ala. (Mickey Welsh/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP, File)

FILE - Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans fire their rifles in celebration in Montgomery, Ala. on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011 following the re-enactment of the 1861 swearing-in ceremony of Confederate States of America provisional President Jefferson Davis on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol. (AP Photo/Kevin Glackmeyer, File)

FILE - A poster of civil rights activist Rosa Parks stands at the front of the sanctuary as Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, speaks at the Rosa Parks memorial service at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., Friday, Oct. 28, 2005. (David Bundy/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP)

FILE - FILE - In this Saturday, June 27, 2015 file photo, Dan Williams, 65, of Ashville, Ala., holds a Confederate flag while standing with his daughter Bonnie-Blue Williams, 15, in front of the Alabama State Capitol building during a Confederate flag rally in Montgomery, Ala. (Albert Cesare/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP, File)

FILE - Mounted police ride into a group of civil rights demonstrators in Montgomery, Ala., March 16, 1965. (AP Photo/Perry Aycock, File)

FILE - Protesters demonstrate against the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday, March 10, 2016. Officer Aaron Smith is charged with murder in the shooting death of Greg Gunn, but a demonstration leader said city officials are alienating community members in the aftermath of the shooting. (AP Photo/Melissa Brown, File)

FILE - A workman removes a restroom sign at Montgomery Municipal Airport, Jan. 5, 1962, in compliance with a federal court order banning segregation. However, city officials delayed plans to remove waiting room furniture and close toilets and water fountains. But they said these and the airport restaurant will be closed if there is a concerted integration attempt. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - United Daughters of the Confederacy member Carrie McGough walks in front of the Alabama Capitol building during a confederate memorial day ceremony in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday, April 27, 2015. McGough said she designed and sewed her hoop skirt to look like an authentic Civil War era dress. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — As bystanders trained their smartphone cameras on the riverfront dock while several white boaters pummeled a Black riverboat co-captain , they couldn’t have known the footage would elicit a national conversation about racial solidarity.

Yet, a week after multiple videos showing the now-infamous brawl and valiant defense of the outnumbered co-captain were shared widely on social media, it’s clear the event truly tapped into the psyche of Black America and created a broader cultural moment.

Andrea Boyles, a sociology professor at Tulane University, said a long history of anti-Black racism and attacks and current events likely magnified the attack’s impact and response.

“Especially at a time like now where we see an increase in anti-Black racism through legislation and otherwise, whether we’re thinking about history, the banning of Black history and curriculum and all sorts of things across the state of Florida” and elsewhere, Boyles said. “So this is why it is on the forefront of people’s minds. And folks are very much tuned in, Black people in particular.”

Many see the Aug. 5 ordeal on the riverfront dock in Montgomery, Alabama’s capital city steeped in civil rights history , as a long-awaited answer to countless calls for help that went unanswered for past Black victims of violence and mob attacks.

“We witnessed a white mob doing this to him,” said Michelle Browder, an artist and social justice entrepreneur in Montgomery, describing the attack by boaters on the Black riverboat co-captain.

“I call it a mob because that is what it was, it was a mob mentality,” she added. “It then became a moment because you saw Black people coming together.”

After being inundated with images and stories of lethal violence against Black people, including motorists in traffic stops, church parishioners and grocery shoppers, the video from Montgomery struck a chord because it didn’t end in the worst of outcomes for Black Americans.

Police in Montgomery, Alabama, said three people are expected to be in custody Tuesday on charges including misdemeanor assault in connection with a riverfront brawl that drew nationwide attention. (Aug. 8)

“For Montgomery to have this moment, we needed to see a win. We needed to see our community coming together and we needed to see justice,” Browder said.

Videos of the brawl showed the participants largely divided along racial lines. Several white men punched or shoved the Black riverboat co-captain after he took a separate vessel to shore and tried to move their pontoon boat. The white boaters’ private vessel was docked in a spot designated for the city-owned Harriott II riverboat, on which more than 200 passengers were waiting to disembark.

The videos then showed mostly Black people rushing to the co-captain’s defense, including a Black teenage riverboat crew member who swam to the dock. The videos also showed the ensuing brawl that included a Black man hitting a white person with a folding chair.

As of Friday, Alabama police had charged four white people with misdemeanor assault. The folding chair-wielding man turned himself in Friday and was charged with disorderly conduct.

Jim Kittrell, the captain of Harriott II, told The Daily Beast that he thought race might have been a factor in the initial attack on his co-captain, but the resulting melee was not a “Black and white thing.”

“This was our crew upset about these idiots,” Kittrell also told WACV radio station .

He later explained that several members of his crew, seen confronting the pontoon boat party after the riverboat docked, “felt they had to retaliate, which was unfortunate.”

“I wish we could have stopped it from happening but, when you see something like that, it was difficult. It was difficult for me to sit there in the wheelhouse watching him being attacked,” Kittrell told the station.

Kittrell told The Associated Press by phone that the city had asked him not to talk about the brawl.

Major Saba Coleman of the Montgomery Police Department said on Tuesday that hate crime charges were ruled out after the department consulted with the local FBI. But several observers noted the presence of a hate motivation, or lack thereof, on the part of the pontoon boat party was not why the event resonated so strongly.

“All these individuals having smartphones and cameras have democratized media and information. In the past, it was a very narrow scope on what news was being reported and from what perspectives,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said.

The technology, Johnson added, “opened up an opportunity for America as a whole to understand the impact of racism, the impact of violence and the opportunity to create a narrative that’s more consistent with keeping African Americans and other communities safe.”

The riverfront brawl spawned a multitude of memes, jokes, parodies, reenactments and even T-shirts. “Lift every chair and swing,” read one shirt in a play on “ Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing ,” the late-19th century hymn sometimes referred to as the Black national anthem.

Another meme likened the co-captain’s toss of his hat into the air to sending the “bat signal,” a reference to the D.C. Comics character Batman. One image of the scene captured from bystander video was altered to imitate Marvel Comics’ Avengers characters assembling through magic portals on the dock to defend the Black co-captain.

Many observers on social media were quick to point out the significance of the city and location where the brawl took place. Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy and the riverfront is an area where enslaved people were once unloaded to be sold at auction. The area is a few blocks from the spot where Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying bus segregation laws.

“Much of (the riverfront brawl reaction) is emblematic of the history of Montgomery,” said Timothy Welbeck, the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University in Philadelphia.

“This is the home of the bus boycott; this is the home of intense, racialized segregation and various forms of resistance today,” he said. “Even if there wasn’t an explicit mention of race, many people saw a white man assaulting a Black man as a proxy for some of the racist behavior that they’ve seen before. It brought about a sense of solidarity and unified fate, too, in this particular moment.”

Then there’s the lingering trauma of seeing past Black victims of violence and mob attacks suffer without help or intervention. Here was the rare event in which bystanders not only chronicled the moment but were able to intervene and help someone they saw being victimized.

In other notable instances, such as George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, bystanders were restrained because the perpetrators were law enforcement officers. In a video of Floyd’s encounter with police filmed by Black bystander Darnella Frazier , people can be heard pleading for the Black man’s life as he gasped for air with a white officer’s knee held to his neck.

Physically intervening in Minneapolis would have invited arrests and placed the would-be rescuers at risk for harm themselves.

Historically, lynching victims were often taken from their families as the Black community had to stand by mutely. Emmett Till’s family members in Mississippi were haunted by their inability to stop the white men who kidnapped and killed him.

Bowder, the Montgomery artist, said the conversation needs to continue.

“I’m hoping for a hopeful message out of this,” she said.

Katrina Hazzard, a Rutgers University professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, said she has seen that hopeful message in the comments of support that have crossed racial and ethnic lines in identifying the aggressors and the right for people to defend themselves and the crewman.

“That’s just been refreshing for me to see and for me to hear across the board,” she said.

Aisha I. Jefferson reported from Chicago and Aaron Morrison, who reported from New York, is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. AP reporter Gary Fields contributed from Washington, D.C.

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4 people are being charged with assault for the waterfront brawl in Montgomery

Dustin Jones

A screenshot from one of the videos of the brawl in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday. The video shows a fight that broke out between an apparent dock worker and several men who appeared to be parking their pontoon boat in a space reserved for the city's riverboat. @Josh_Moon / Screenshot by NPR hide caption

Authorities in Montgomery, Ala., are charging three men with assault for attacking a riverboat co-captain on Saturday. When officers arrived on scene, the fight had spiraled out of control into a full on brawl at the city's Riverfront Park.

Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert told reporters at a press conference Tuesday that three men involved in the incident have been identified as: Richard Roberts, 48, facing two counts of third-degree assault; Allen Todd, 23, and Zachary Shipman, 25, both of whom face one count of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor in Alabama.

On Thursday, Mary Todd, 21, turned herself in to authorities and was also charged with third-degree assault, officials said.

The chief told reporters that the department has been working with the city's district attorney and the FBI on what charges could be filed. Albert said that at this time the incident doesn't constitute charges of a hate crime or inciting a riot.

Montgomery brawl doesn't constitute hate crime charges, police chief says

"I understand the question and concern, that's why this department looked under every stone for answers," Albert told reporters.

Albert said one of the men is already in police custody in Selma, while two others planned to turn themselves in later on Tuesday.

The chief said the men had parked their pontoon boat in a space reserved for the Harriott II riverboat, and that though there were no signs posted at the time, the dock space is well-known to be for the ship.

Damien Pickett, the Black man seen in videos of the incident, is the co-captain of the Harriot II. He was sent ashore with an unidentified 16-year-old white male employee to remove the pontoon boat after some 45 minutes of trying to dock, Albert said.

The crew from the Harriott II had tried to reach the owners of the boat by using their loudspeaker, but the owners responded with vulgar language and hand gestures, according to Albert.

I've spent my career explaining race, but hit a wall with Montgomery brawl memes

When Pickett arrived on the dock, he tried to remove the boat so the Harriot II could safely dock, but was then confronted by the three white suspects, and a fight quickly ensued, Albert said.

The police said in a statement Monday that officers responded to a disturbance near Riverfront Park, and "At the scene, they located a large group of subjects engaged in a physical altercation." By the end of the night, 13 people were detained and interviewed, but ultimately released, Albert told reporters on Tuesday.

Albert said more warrants will likely be issued as officers continue reviewing footage. He also asked 42-year-old Reggie Gray, a Black man allegedly seen using a chair as a weapon in the footage, to come forward for questioning.

Pickett was the only one reported to have been treated at a hospital for injuries sustained in the brawl, Albert noted.

Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed promised residents in a statement on Saturday that "justice will be served."

"This was an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred. As our police department investigates these intolerable actions, we should not become desensitized to violence of any kind in our community," Reed said. "Those who choose violent actions will be held accountable by our criminal justice system."

Reed briefly addressed the issue during a press event Monday afternoon. He said that the safety of the community is paramount, that police are continuing to investigate the incident and that more details will be shared in a press conference on Tuesday.

"We want to make sure that the community is aware that we are fully engaged and we are doing all of our due diligence to find out exactly what took place," Reed said.

There was an all out brawl in Montgomery yesterday. This is the beginning of it. The man in the white shirt is a dock worker for the city. According to several people present, the white guys had been told to move their pontoon so the city's riverboat could park. Then this.... pic.twitter.com/BVkgXID8JX — Josh Moon 🇺🇸 (@Josh_Moon) August 6, 2023

Alabama political reporter Josh Moon shared a video of the fight on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It shows that the incident appears to have been started by a group of boaters who had docked their pontoon boat in a space reserved for the city's riverboat.

Videos show Pickett working to untie the pontoon boat when he is confronted by a group of white men who appear to be responsible for the boat.

The riverboat's operator did not respond to a request for comment.

While the attendant was pointing to the riverboat making its way to the dock, one of the men becomes visibly agitated before striking him. One man appears to try to break up the attack, but then more young white men sprinted along the dock and joined the fight, then dragging Pickett to the ground to continue their attack.

The attack quickly spiraled out of control as several onlookers joined in on the chaos.

The incident started just hours after former President Donald Trump joined his supporters at an annual Republican Party summer dinner in Montgomery, which is credited as the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.

Albert said the investigation is ongoing and that it's important to note that the brawl wasn't started by Montgomery residents.

"This is not indicative of who we are as a city. Montgomery is much better than that," the chief said. He also issued a stern warning ahead of any "possible retaliatory acts."

"Don't come here with it. We're not going to tolerate it," Albert said. "We will be active, we will be aggressive, and we will not allow this type of behavior in our city."

Correction Aug. 8, 2023

An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the name of the city's riverboat as the Harriet II. The boat is called the Harriott II. It has also been updated to clarify that police have detained several people in connection to the brawl, and say charges are pending. Previously, the story said multiple people had been arrested.

Witnesses recount brawl at Montgomery riverfront

Witnesses say a large brawl that broke out on an Alabama riverfront Saturday was fueled by alcohol and adrenaline. 

Bystanders said the incident began when a worker tried to clear the dock along the Alabama River so the Harriott II Riverboat could dock. A group of rowdy boaters refused to move their pontoon and attacked the dock worker when he untied the boat to make way for the Harriott II.

“They just didn’t think the rules applied to them. It was so avoidable. This never had to have happened,” a witness, Leslie Mawhorter, 52, who was aboard the Harriott II, said in an interview. Video of the incident shows a group of what appear to be white men running to the boardwalk one by one and attacking the worker, who is Black. 

The man who was initially attacked and the people involved in the fight have not been publicly named. 

“Everything just spiraled from there,” Mawhorter said. “I knew something was going to go down, because their attitude was just, ‘You can’t tell us what to do.’ They were going to be confrontational regardless of who you were.” 

A spokesperson for the city Parks & Recreation, which oversees the riverboat attractions, declined to comment. The Montgomery Riverfront is a popular summertime destination with a riverboat, a park, an amphitheater, a stadium and more. 

After the initial attack, several people appeared to rush to the worker’s defense, one of them even swimming from the Harriott II over to the dock to take part in the brawl. Mawhorter said officers turned to the onlookers for help identifying the aggressors. “They were listening to us and to other people telling them who was involved and who needed to be cuffed,” she said.

Montgomery police had multiple people in handcuffs by the end of the melee, which started shortly before 7 p.m., and there were at least three active warrants for people believed to have been involved afterward, according to NBC affiliate WSFA .

Mayor Steven L. Reed said in a statement Sunday: “The Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job. Warrants are being signed and justice will be served.” 

He reiterated his response at a news conference Monday, calling the fight “an unfortunate incident.” He said police are still investigating. 

Christa Owen, 47, was on the Harriott II with her husband and their daughter when the fight began. She and Mawhorter said they and the other passengers had been waiting several minutes for the group to move their pontoon and allow the Harriott to dock. Owen said the worker who was attacked was initially the only crew member trying to handle the rowdy boaters.

“What was hard is we were all on the boat and witnessing our poor crewman being attacked by these guys, and we couldn’t do anything about it,” Owen said. “It was really difficult to watch, and, like I said, we felt helpless, because we were forced to be spectators.”

Owen said she decided to record the incident to make sure the “right people” were arrested. Her and Mawhorter’s videos were among many that began circulating on the internet. Many social media users have shared memes and colorful commentary, noting that the combatants were split along racial lines. Many praised the group of Black men for coming to the Black worker’s defense as he battled the group of white men. 

“It was inexcusable behavior,” Owen said, adding that she believes alcohol was a factor. “I can’t imagine anyone just disregarding moving their boat 2 feet so that a three-story dinner cruise boat could park back in that spot.”

CORRECTION (August 8, 2023, 11:12 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the day that the incident took place. It was Saturday, not Sunday.

Char Adams is a reporter for NBC BLK who writes about race.

Riverfront brawl brings unwelcome attention to historic civil rights city in Alabama

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Three white boaters in Alabama’s capital will be charged with misdemeanor assault for a riverfront brawl with a Black boat captain that drew nationwide attention, with more charges likely to come, police said.

Videos of the incident, which circulated widely on social media, have proved crucial in investigating what happened, Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert said. One person has turned himself in, and the other two have agreed to turn themselves in by the end of the day Tuesday.

“The investigation is ongoing and more charges are likely,” Albert said.

The fight was largely split along racial lines and began when a moored pontoon boat blocked the Harriott II riverboat from docking in its designated space along the city’s riverfront, Albert said. The Harriott II had 227 passengers aboard for a tour.

The viral video of white boaters assaulting a Black riverboat captain and the following melee brought unwelcome attention to the historic city — which is known across the country for the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s and voting rights marches in the 1960s. The city in recent decades has tried to move beyond its reputation as a site of racial tension and to build a tourism trade instead based on its critical role in the civil rights movement.

“I don’t think you can judge any community by any one incident. This is not indicative of who we are,” Mayor Steven Reed said Tuesday. He noted that the people on the pontoon boat were not from Montgomery. “It’s important for us to address this as an isolated incident, one that was avoidable and one that was brought on by individuals who chose the wrong path of action,” Reed said.

Granderson: Montgomery racial brawl video shows it’s not enough to be ‘not racist’

White people shouldn’t just pat themselves on the back for being less terrible than the crowd that attacked a lone Black man on Saturday.

Aug. 8, 2023

Before the fight began, the riverboat captain tried to contact the pontoon boat owner by loudspeaker. People on the other boat responded with “obscene gestures, curse words and taunting,” the police chief said. The riverboat co-captain took another vessel to shore to attempt to move the pontoon boat and “was attacked by several members of the private boat.” Albert said several people from the riverboat came to the co-captain’s defense, “engaging in what we all have seen since on social media.”

Video captured by bystanders showed that once the Harriott II docked, several people from the riverboat rushed to confront the people on the pontoon boat and more fighting broke out. The video showed people being shoved, punched and kicked, and one man hitting someone with a chair. At least one person was knocked into the water.

“The co-captain was doing his job. He was simply trying to move the boat just enough so the cruise ship could park safely, but it quickly escalated,” Albert said.

The police chief said so far the charges are against people from the pontoon boat who assaulted the co-captain and a 16-year-old who got involved. Police are trying to locate and question the man with the chair.

The fight took place along Montgomery’s downtown riverfront in an area where slave owners once unloaded people from steamboats to be sold at auction.

Now, the city has developed the area into a tourist and recreation place with restaurants, bars and hotels. The Harriott II take tourists on sightseeing trips with food and entertainment along the Alabama River.

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The brawl sparked dozens of internet memes and videos with some joking that the chair should be placed in a local museum.

Albert said while some made racial taunts, the police department does not believe the motivation behind the fight rises to the standard of a hate crime. Alcohol is believed to be an escalating factor, he said.

Christa Owen of Clanton was aboard the riverboat with her husband and their daughter for a dinner cruise to celebrate the daughter’s 12th birthday. She said that the riverboat captain said on loudspeaker: “Black pontoon boat, move your boat,” and that passengers also yelled for the boat to move so they could dock.

“They shrugged their shoulders,” Owen said. She said the crew member, identified by police as the co-captain of the riverboat, got off to move the pontoon boat a few feet. Owen said the tension was obvious and mounting before punches were thrown. She said passengers felt helpless as they watched the co-captain get pummeled by several people on shore.

Owen, a stay-at-home mom, filmed the confrontation as it began on the dock. She said as a “mother of many” she knows the importance of being able to document how a conflict started. Once the boat was able to dock, she said, her family had to figure out how to get off the boat safely with the fighting going on around them.

“It didn’t have to escalate to that,” she said.

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Several people detained after fight breaks out at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park in Alabama

Update : Montgomery police say 4 active warrants out after brawl at Riverfront Park in Alabama

Several people were taken into custody Saturday night after a fight broke out at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park in Alabama, authorities said.

The Montgomery Police Department responded to a disturbance at the 200 block of Coosa Street in Montgomery, Alabama, at 7 p.m. after a large group of people were fighting. Several people were detained, police said.

A video of the incident, which appeared to be racially divided, was shared Sunday on social media. It’s been reported that it began because a pontoon boat was blocking dock space needed to park a riverboat. That area is the regular spot reserved for the Harriott II Riverboat.

Watch the video to see the massive boat deck brawl that led to several people being detained.

One short video, posted on social media by Josh Moon of the Alabama Political Reporter, shows several white people fighting a single Black man, who according to Jasmine Williams of WSFA is a dock worker.

The only audio heard is from witnesses yelling, but it appears to begin with an argument between the Black man and one of the white men. Another white man rushes and hits the Black man, who backs up and tosses his hat into the air. Then the fight begins in earnest, and several white people begin hitting the Black man.

During the video, one witness, apparently watching from the riverboat, screamed repeatedly, “Y’all help that brother!” to onlookers who were on shore. It appears some people from the shore did join in to defend him, and the video shows at least one Black man dive into the water from the riverboat.

“Get up there, young buck!” yelled another voice on the video.

By the time the swimmer climbed up onto the dock, about a minute into the video, most of the altercation appeared to be over in Moon's video.

A separate video posted by Lauryn Lauren shows scenes after that, as the Harriott II was preparing to dock. A group of people approached the pontoon boat, and more fighting broke out. At least one person fell into the water from the dock. Authorities were soon on the scene and police began taking people into custody .

Authorities have not released the names of the detained suspects. Charges against anyone involved in the fight are pending, MPD said.

Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel can be contacted at   [email protected]

Suspects detained after Saturday night brawl on Riverfront Park dock

Fight began between several white people and one black man, apparently over dock space reserved for riverboat..

Several people were taken into custody Saturday night after a fight on the dock at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park.

A video of the incident, which appeared to be racially divided, was shared Sunday on social media.

Montgomery police said they responded to a disturbance at the 200 block of Coosa Street at 7 p.m. According to MPD, a large group of people were fighting. Several were detained, MPD said.

The brawl was captured on video by onlookers. It’s been reported that it began because a pontoon boat was blocking dock space needed to park a riverboat. That area is the regular spot reserved for the Harriott II Riverboat.

On Sunday, MPD said there were four active warrants issued from the fight, with a possibility of more after review of additional videos.

More: Montgomery dock brawl: Racial issue? Maybe. Lack of humanity? Definitely

"Last night, the Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job," Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed said Sunday in a release on social media. "Warrants have been signed and justice will be served."

One short video, posted on social media by Josh Moon of the Alabama Political Reporter, shows several white people fighting a single Black man, riverboat co-captain Damieon Pickett. The only audio heard is from witnesses yelling, but it appears to begin with an argument between Pickett and one of the white men. Another white man rushes and hits Pickett, who backs up and tosses his hat into the air. Then the brawl begins in earnest, and several white people begin hitting Pickett.

During the video, one witness, apparently watching from the riverboat, screamed repeatedly, “Y’all help that brother!” to onlookers who were on shore. It appears some people from the shore did join in to defend Pickett, and the video shows at least one Black teenager dive into the water from the riverboat.

“Get up there, young buck!” yelled another voice on the video.

By the time the swimmer climbed up onto the dock, about a minute into the video, most of the altercation appeared to be over in Moon's video.

A separate video posted by Lauryn Lauren shows scenes after that, as the Harriott II was preparing to dock. A group of people approached the pontoon boat, and more fighting broke out. At least one person fell into the water from the dock. Authorities were soon on the scene and police began taking people into custody .

"This was an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred," Reed said. "As our police department investigates these intolerable actions, we should not become desensitized to violence of any kind in our community. Those who choose violence will be held accountable by our criminal justice system."

Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel can be contacted at   [email protected]

News | Alabama riverfront brawl videos spark a…

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News | Alabama riverfront brawl videos spark a cultural moment about race, solidarity and justice

Bystanders who trained their smartphone cameras on an alabama riverfront dock, as several white boaters pummeled a black riverboat co-captain, couldn’t have known the footage would elicit a national conversation about racial solidarity.

Yet, a week after multiple videos showing the now-infamous brawl and valiant defense of the outnumbered co-captain were shared widely on social media, it’s clear the event truly tapped into the psyche of Black America and created a broader cultural moment.

Andrea Boyles, a sociology professor at Tulane University, said a long history of anti-Black racism and attacks and current events likely magnified the attack’s impact and response.

“Especially at a time like now where we see an increase in anti-Black racism through legislation and otherwise, whether we’re thinking about history, the banning of Black history and curriculum and all sorts of things across the state of Florida” and elsewhere, Boyles said. “So this is why it is on the forefront of people’s minds. And folks are very much tuned in, Black people in particular.”

Many see the Aug. 5 ordeal on the riverfront dock in Montgomery, Alabama’s capital city steeped in civil rights history , as a long-awaited answer to countless calls for help that went unanswered for past Black victims of violence and mob attacks.

“We witnessed a white mob doing this to him,” said Michelle Browder, an artist and social justice entrepreneur in Montgomery, describing the attack by boaters on the Black riverboat co-captain.

“I call it a mob because that is what it was, it was a mob mentality,” she added. “It then became a moment because you saw Black people coming together.”

After being inundated with images and stories of lethal violence against Black people, including motorists in traffic stops, church parishioners and grocery shoppers, the video from Montgomery struck a chord because it didn’t end in the worst of outcomes for Black Americans.

“For Montgomery to have this moment, we needed to see a win. We needed to see our community coming together and we needed to see justice,” Browder said.

Videos of the brawl showed the participants largely divided along racial lines. Several white men punched or shoved the Black riverboat co-captain after he took a separate vessel to shore and tried to move their pontoon boat. The white boaters’ private vessel was docked in a spot designated for the city-owned Harriott II riverboat, on which more than 200 passengers were waiting to disembark.

The videos then showed mostly Black people rushing to the co-captain’s defense, including a Black teenage riverboat crew member who swam to the dock. The videos also showed the ensuing brawl that included a Black man hitting a white person with a folding chair.

As of Friday, Alabama police had charged four white people with misdemeanor assault. The folding chair-wielding man turned himself in Friday and was charged with disorderly conduct.

Jim Kittrell, the captain of Harriott II, told The Daily Beast that he thought race might have been a factor in the initial attack on his co-captain, but the resulting melee was not a “Black and white thing.”

“This was our crew upset about these idiots,” Kittrell also told WACV radio station .

He later explained that several members of his crew, seen confronting the pontoon boat party after the riverboat docked, “felt they had to retaliate, which was unfortunate.”

“I wish we could have stopped it from happening but, when you see something like that, it was difficult. It was difficult for me to sit there in the wheelhouse watching him being attacked,” Kittrell told the station.

Kittrell told The Associated Press by phone that the city had asked him not to talk about the brawl.

Major Saba Coleman of the Montgomery Police Department said on Tuesday that hate crime charges were ruled out after the department consulted with the local FBI. But several observers noted the presence of a hate motivation, or lack thereof, on the part of the pontoon boat party was not why the event resonated so strongly.

“All these individuals having smartphones and cameras have democratized media and information. In the past, it was a very narrow scope on what news was being reported and from what perspectives,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said.

The technology, Johnson added, “opened up an opportunity for America as a whole to understand the impact of racism, the impact of violence and the opportunity to create a narrative that’s more consistent with keeping African Americans and other communities safe.”

The riverfront brawl spawned a multitude of memes, jokes, parodies, reenactments and even T-shirts. “Lift every chair and swing,” read one shirt in a play on “ Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing ,” the late-19th century hymn sometimes referred to as the Black national anthem.

Another meme likened the co-captain’s toss of his hat into the air to sending the “bat signal,” a reference to the D.C. Comics character Batman. One image of the scene captured from bystander video was altered to imitate Marvel Comics’ Avengers characters assembling through magic portals on the dock to defend the Black co-captain.

Many observers on social media were quick to point out the significance of the city and location where the brawl took place. Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy and the riverfront is an area where enslaved people were once unloaded to be sold at auction. The area is a few blocks from the spot where Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying bus segregation laws.

“Much of (the riverfront brawl reaction) is emblematic of the history of Montgomery,” said Timothy Welbeck, the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University in Philadelphia.

“This is the home of the bus boycott; this is the home of intense, racialized segregation and various forms of resistance today,” he said. “Even if there wasn’t an explicit mention of race, many people saw a white man assaulting a Black man as a proxy for some of the racist behavior that they’ve seen before. It brought about a sense of solidarity and unified fate, too, in this particular moment.”

Then there’s the lingering trauma of seeing past Black victims of violence and mob attacks suffer without help or intervention. Here was the rare event in which bystanders not only chronicled the moment but were able to intervene and help someone they saw being victimized.

In other notable instances, such as George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, bystanders were restrained because the perpetrators were law enforcement officers. In a video of Floyd’s encounter with police filmed by Black bystander Darnella Frazier , people can be heard pleading for the Black man’s life as he gasped for air with a white officer’s knee held to his neck.

Physically intervening in Minneapolis would have invited arrests and placed the would-be rescuers at risk for harm themselves.

Historically, lynching victims were often taken from their families as the Black community had to stand by mutely. Emmett Till’s family members in Mississippi were haunted by their inability to stop the white men who kidnapped and killed him.

Bowder, the Montgomery artist, said the conversation needs to continue.

“I’m hoping for a hopeful message out of this,” she said.

Katrina Hazzard, a Rutgers University professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, said she has seen that hopeful message in the comments of support that have crossed racial and ethnic lines in identifying the aggressors and the right for people to defend themselves and the crewman.

“That’s just been refreshing for me to see and for me to hear across the board,” she said.

Aisha I. Jefferson reported from Chicago and Aaron Morrison, who reported from New York, is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. AP reporter Gary Fields contributed from Washington, D.C.

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• Anniston/Gadsden

What is the Harriott II, riverboat involved in Montgomery riverfront brawl?

• Updated: Aug. 13, 2023, 1:54 p.m. |
• Published: Aug. 11, 2023, 5:00 a.m.

The Harriott II riverboat sits docked in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023. A riverfront brawl occurred on Aug. 5 when a crew member was punched for trying to move a pontoon boat that was blocking the riverboat from docking. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)

• Mary Colurso | [email protected]

The Harriott II riverboat has been in the news lately, figuring into the infamous riverfront brawl in Montgomery that happened on Saturday, Aug. 5, and quickly captured national attention via viral videos.

The videos showed a Black riverboat co-captain attacked by a group of white people as other Black people rushed to his defense. As of Friday morning, Aug. 12, four people had been charged with assault in connection to the large fight, and another was being sought for questioning in connection with the incident.

The melee was ignited, police said, when the Harriott II, which had been out on the Alabama River for a dinner cruise, was trying to dock in a spot that had been designated and reserved for the riverboat. A private pontoon boat was docked too close to the spot, and the captain used a public address system to try to find the pontoon’s occupants and get them to move it.

The Harriott’s co-captain, Damien Pickett, was taken by a smaller boat to the dock to try to address the situation. That’s when a confrontation ensued between Pickett and some of the pontoon boat occupants.

READ: Montgomery riverboat crew says they were attacked by drunk people yelling n word, records state

“The co-captain was doing his job,” Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert told CNN . “He was simply trying to move the boat in just enough to where the cruise ship could park safely in its identified location. However, it quickly escalated.”

Police responded to break up the fight, and 13 people were detained and questioned for several hours Saturday, officials said. Meanwhile, videos taken by bystanders during the brawl were posted on social media, causing a national sensation. An investigation is ongoing, police said.

READ: Montgomery Riverfront Park brawl: 2 defendants jailed on assault charges

The Harriott II, a familiar sight on the river, might have been taken for granted by folks in Montgomery in the past, but no longer. Recent comments on the Harriott’s Facebook page , both positive and negative, have mentioned the brawl, and the incident has significantly raised the riverboat’s profile.

So what is the Harriott II? What role does it serve on the city’s entertainment and tourism landscape? What services does it provide, and how much does it cost to ride? If you’re unfamiliar with the riverboat, here’s a primer.

The Harriott II riverboat sails down the Alabama River in March 2013 at Union Station Train Shed in Montgomery, Alabama. (AL.com file photo/Julie Bennett)

What is the Harriott II?

The Harriott II, a 19th-century riverboat, offers public and private cruises on the Alabama River. The riverboat is part of Montgomery’s entertainment district, and was part of a downtown revitalization effort in the city that revved up in 2008-2009.

Right now, Montgomery’s website for parks and recreation and special events touts the Harriott II as “center stage of Montgomery’s entertainment district.” The City of Montgomery website lauds the Harriott II as a prime attraction on its “vibrant riverfront,” and also points to “ballets, sports complexes, museums, civil rights memorials, city parks.”

The Harriott II arrived in Montgomery in October 2008 , after taking a 1,400-mile trip that took about 28 days from its origin in Savannah, Georgia. The Montgomery Riverfront Development Foundation paid about $500,000 for the riverboat as an entertainment and tourist attraction, according to a report by WFSA TV , an NBC affiliate in Montgomery. Reports at the time said the riverboat could hold up to 400 passengers.

The Harriott II is maintained and managed by the City of Montgomery/Riverfront Facilities, according to an online brochure with rental information.

Right now, the riverboat offers regularly scheduled cruises for the public on Fridays through Sundays through October. There’s a two-hour dinner cruise on Fridays at 6:30 p.m., a two-hour getaway cruise on Saturdays at 4:30 p.m. and a two-hour blues cruise on Sundays at 4:30 p.m. Food, drinks, and live entertainment are part of the cruises.

Tickets are $30-$55 for adults, $15-$35 for children. Packages for birthdays and anniversaries cost $49.95-$79.95, the riverboat’s website says. The agenda trims to Saturdays and Sundays in November. (See this online brochure for details.)

People board the Harriott II about a half-hour before departure, at 255 Commerce St. near Riverfront Park . Tickets can be bought online or at the box office at 213 Commerce St. At least 35 paying customers must be on board for a cruise, the brochure says. About 227 people were on the Harriott when the riverfront brawl happened on Aug. 5, according to CNN.

Charter rentals for the Harriott II range from $3,700 to $10,500, depending on the day, the cruise and the services provided. There’s also an educational cruise that lasts one hour and has a minimum of 75 passengers, with historic narration and a box lunch, that costs $22 per person.

The Harriott II has scheduled several specialty cruises this year, including a Halloween costume party cruise on Oct. 28; a murder mystery cruise on Nov. 19; holiday cruises Dec. 1-2, 8-9 and 15-16; and a New Year’s Eve cruise on Dec. 31.

Food entrees on the riverboat range from barbecue chicken to beef tips over rice to spaghetti and meatballs, according to the rental brochure, and grill area offers burgers, wings, nachos and other casual fare. Beer, wine, liquor and specialty drinks are available at the bar.

The Harriott II has a rating of 4 out of 5 on TripAdvisor , based on 82 reviews. It’s got 4.5 stars on Google, based on 300 reviews.

MORE ON THE RIVERFRONT BRAWL:

21-year-old woman is 4th person charged in Montgomery riverboat brawl

3 white men in pontoon boat charged in Montgomery brawl; Black man with chair sought for questioning

Johnson: Montgomery brawl defenders embody broader Black resolve, ‘Not today, y’all’

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Harriott II Riverboat

Come on down to the River and re-live history while enjoying a relaxing cruise on Montgomery's downtown attraction, the Harriott II. Docked beside the uniquely built Riverwalk Amphitheater, this elegant 19th-century riverboat is center stage of Montgomery's entertainment district and hosts public and private cruiseswtihgreat food, drinks, music, entertainment, and fun along the scenic Alabama River.

Getting There

• 255 Commerce Street
• Montgomery, AL 36104

Where to Stay

Sleep inn & suites, drury inn and suites montgomery, woodspring suites montgomery, quality inn & suites, key west inn south, extended stay america - montgomery - eastern blvd., homewood suites by hilton-eastchase, days inn coliseum-montgomery, courtyard by marriott, hillcrest manor bed & breakfast, upcoming events, montgomery whitewater | summer sunday brunch at eddy's, town of pike road summerfest 2024, joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat, capital city shape note singing, stars on the riverfront, montgomery whitewater | summer solstice, zelda in the backyard (world premiere), montgomery travel exhibit, glow party cruises, where to eat, the exchange bar, dreamland bar-b-que, derk's filet & vine, vintage cafe, island delight caribbean restaurant at dexter, capital city club, india palace, peyton’s place, find your alabama sweet spot.

Find the sweetest Alabama vacation spot perfectly suited just for you. Customize your next Alabama vacation by the type of experience you are looking for, then filter by the region of Alabama you want to visit. Don't know what your Alabama destination should be? Let our interactive location map be your guide. Now, where is your next Alabama Sweet Spot?

Chris' Famous Hot Dog

Common Bond Brewers

D Road Cafe

John and Joyce Caddell Sculpture Garden

El Taco Shop

Freedom Rides Museum/ Historic Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station

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