I’ve been fascinated by my reactions to the Alabama Brawl, affectionately christened by some as “Fade in the Water.” I never got into physical fights as a child in school or out, never with my only sister or anyone else. And truly it’s not the fight itself that fascinates me. It’s the aftermath.
Wait, I’ve tossed you into the water with no life preserver. It’s that old in medias res gambit, like TV thrillers where the action starts with the sound of a bullet or a scream and you see someone running away. No idea what’s going on, but it looks exciting.
Anyway, here’s the story:
At a historically significant boat dock in Montgomery, Alabama, a group of ostensibly drunk white revelers in a small private pontoon boat docked in a spot reserved for large commercial vehicles, like riverboats. Revelers met the riverboat captain’s instructions to move (announced over a public address system) with profane jeers and gestures, so Damien Pickett, the Black riverboat senior deckhand first mate, who serves as co-captain, disembarked onto a smaller boat that took him to the dock.
Pickett, in uniform, walked along the pier and asked the five revelers to vacate the Harriott II’s designated spot, so that his 227 passengers could disembark. They clearly assumed he was someone of no consequence or, as Roger B. Taney once said, a black man with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Meanwhile as Pickett pointed to the full riverboat and the 5-person pontoon blocking traffic, passengers on the riverboat rhythmically chanted:
Get out the way. Move, bitch.
Get out the way. Move, bitch.
Get out the way. Move, bitch.
Pickett told them the rules once again, but they refused to move. In fact, when he and the young white male deckhand who had ferried Pickett to the pier, tried to use its ropes to move the pontoon the few feet necessary, three of the pontooners disembarked, arguing. One ran up and shoved Pickett hard, then the rest attacked him as a gang. They also assaulted the young deckhand.
Here’s where I put in a side note that if they had been drinking, rather than (as I suspect) boycotting, Bud Light, this might never have happened, but I digress.
Pickett took off his hat and tossed it up in the air like that opening scene in the Mary Tyler Moore show, ready to defend himself, although outnumbered. That’s when the real action started.
That hat toss, now referred to as the Bat Signal (or black signal), seemed to cause Black people to come out of, well, everywhere, to defend Captain Pickett. Because what the attackers didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, was that port’s history as a famous point of sale for slaves. There are historical markers all over.
Over 400,000 Africans were enslaved in Alabama, many bought and sold in Montgomery (the city that briefly served as Capitol of the Confederacy). They were brought from New Orleans and elsewhere on the banks of the Alabama River. But that’s not its only troubled history.
Think about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. And where was that Selma march headed on Bloody Sunday? To Montgomery (put a pin in that Selma reference). And as recently as 2018, a memorial for the victims of lynching was opened where? In Montgomery.
Oh, and where is the mostly white legislature defying a Supreme Court ruling to allow the 25.8% black population two measly Congressional representatives? Alabama. Where does this legislature meet? At the state capitol. And where is the state capitol? Montgomery. Lots of history, much of it bad.
So on this Saturday in August 2023, Black people saw a lone black man set upon by a gang of white men in a place where lynching was once commonplace and clearly, as one, they thought “Not today, Mr Slavemaster Wannabe. History will not repeat itself today!” And history was made. The “Alabama Boat Brawl, ” the “Melee in Montgomery,” the “Alabama Sweet Tea Party,” “Mayhem in Montgomery” came to life.
Fists flying, feet flashing… A older black man, now known as “Mr Folding Chair,” picked up a nearby white metal folding chair and taught many a lesson. His was, thankfully, the only weapon. Among the tourists in the area was a purple t-shirt-clad reunion of the black fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, from the Class of 1975. Men in their sixties.
This, alone, led comedian-singer Rita Brent to joke “walk up, limp back” as one of the dance steps for a song she posted on YouTube. This talented artist who often adds gospel music elements to her act, even turned the Black National Anthem (“Lift Every Voice and Sing) into a Battle of Montgomery anthem (“Lift Every Arm and Swing”).
Rapper Dapper Dan Midas (DDM), who hosts a YouTube podcast as “Secretary of Shade” where listeners are his “Cabinet,” started in a light vein. He called the defenders Power Rangers, giving off a “Wakanda Forever!” vibe; “[The event] is giving WWE [vibes].”
I connected to his point of view, asserting his opposition to violence, but also sensing that “our ancestors were vindicated.” He especially noted a black teenage riverboat hand who dived into the water and swam to engage in the defense of his crew mate.
For DDM, this brought back the history of Africans who dived from ships into the ocean and died trying to escape enslavement. For me, it brought back the American history of public pools being drained rather than let black people swim in them. Even movie stars like the lovely Dorothy Dandridge were not exempt. When she ran her bare foot through the pool at her hotel, the management reportedly drained and refilled it. Although this may be legend, permanent draining of municipal pools did happen elsewhere.
With all these dire historical incidents whirling in my spirit, humor couldn’t help but be part of my thoughts. After all, the old spirituals from the time of slavery often hid bits of ironic humor, as in “I Got Shoes” where “everybody talking ‘bout heaven ain’t going there.” So when the relief that no black person had been killed either by the revelers or by the police, but had instead been heroes running, walking, swimming, hobbling to the rescue, I took pleasure in the community of what was once called “Black Twitter.”
Seeing a young black man swim to the rescue was highly symbolic. His heroism attracted the most creative memes:
Swimi Hendrix = after virtuoso guitarist Jimi Hendrix
Stingray Leonard = after Sugar Ray Leonard, boxer extraordinaire
Scuba Gooding Jr = double meaning, rhyming with the name of actor Cuba Gooding Jr, but also referring to his role in Men of Honor, playing real-life hero, Carl Brashear, a sharecropper from landlocked Kentucky who joined the US Navy. Despite the racist sabotage of his superior officers, he powered through, becoming the first black Master Diver in American history.
Ja’Michael Phelps = also a two-fer, first after Olympic super-swimmer Michael Phelps, but giving the name a black American twist.
Gary Indiana Jones = a third two-fer of a 78% black working class city, home of the Jackson Five family, paired with the silver screen adventurer.
Aquamane = a fourth two-fer pairing the mythical film superhero Aquaman with the Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane known for the song “Beat it Up” (which refers to pleasing women, but still works here).
Even a clever sobriquet for the incident, “Fade in the Water,” has double meanings of the kind I wrote of in a scholarly essay on irony in spirituals. The nickname references both the fade, a haircut popular among black males, and “wade” from the famed spiritual “Wade in the Water” in which the image of slaves escaping through water where the dogs could not catch their scent is presented through the imagery of the Israelites who escaped through the Red Sea because God, “troubled” the water (Exodus 14: 19–31). This gives the event an almost “blessed” feel because, like the Israelites of yore, the black people of here and now escaped mostly unscathed while the neo-Egyptians got inundated.
The white men who started the brawl and their women who chose to join the fray, were not only inundated by defenders (a few more were even tossed in the drink), but ended up both the worse for wear and arrested as well (the three initiators, aged 48, 25, and 23, plus one woman, were each charged with third-degree assault).
Taking a swipe at trolls who come to his YouTube site and leave racist comments calling black people “savages” and “thugs,” DDM schools them on the practices of maritime courtesy, including the “law of gross tonnage” (the largest boat always has right-of-way) so the trolls could learn “the science of why they got their ass beat.” Then he goes into Newtonian physics.
That leads to a lecture on what could have happened if the captain hadn’t been able to stop his boat in time. He posits that the news would have said a big “cruise ship” full of black people had run over a “little tiny boat” of white people.
Philosopher-comedian D.L. Hughley took a more serious tone in an episode of his “Notes from the GED Section,” connecting the white attackers’ reaction to that of the aforementioned Taney, an actual SCOTUS justice who said “[The Negro] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” but Hughley also deals with the issue of pride among the black community because we unified and prevailed.
Oh, and by the way, the captain of the riverboat, a white male named Jim Kittrell, noted that he’d had trouble with these same pontoon boaters before. They’re from Selma. He believes the attack was racially motivated, but the police (the same police who urged Kittrell against filing charges the last time he had trouble with these pontooners) said there wasn’t enough evidence. Things that make you go, hmmmm.
Jokes referencing Macon, Georgia native Jason Aldean’s MAGA anthem “Try that in a Small Town” popped up all over (“They tried that in a small town” “Don’t bring that small town crap up in here”). Dances, songs, ballads have already been produced.
In addition to DDM’s YouTube Cabinet meeting, Damon Young’s podcast “Fade in the Water: The Montgomery River Brawl” (August 10, 2023) addressed this with the black community’s common combo platter of sadness, humor, and weariness.
Morgan Moody, aka Morgan the Producer, noted this on the August 10, 2023 podcast episode, Stuck with Damon Young. They took DDM’s initial lighthearted approach, but kept it longer. After the first white person hit Pickett, they joked, “all of these black people converge out of nowhere, from land, from air, and even from water.” They discuss the camera angles that keep coming out. Morgan and I shared the appreciation of creativity in the black community.
But even in the humor, they had to acknowledge that part of the humor is relief because too many incidents between white male gangs and black defenders have ended in deaths — ours. They revisit the historic context of lynching postcards and how these white boaters, whose allies are now trying to ban the knowledge of this context, “fucked around and found out.”
What used to be lynching postcards in the Jim Crow era are now harmless pictures on Instagram and elsewhere where black people are photographed holding folding chairs with the caption: “I live in an open carry state.” Can you imagine? I ached from laughing.
But the story of Tammy, a woman who pushed one of the pontoon women into the river, brought back past trauma. Tammy said she had had a son die; she knew Pickett and would not let that happen to him. I ached to cry.
One of the funniest parts of Damon and Morgan’s discussion was discussion of Pickett’s hat. Apparently, after he tossed it in the air, none of the many camera angles show it returning to earth. Morgan quips, “the ancestors took it from there, that’s why” to which Damon responds, “Yeah…it was a call…an ancestor caught it and sent a message down back to earth.”
They were amazed at the swimmer who could swim that distance, climb onto the pier in wet clothes, and bodyslam a man twice his size. “I would need two business days to recover,” Morgan joked. Damon, who cannot swim, said he’d need a month.
Meanwhile, Detroit rapper, Gmac Cash, has released a rap song, with my favorite line, a shout-out to Mr. Folding Chair: “that chair going down in history.”
In a take-off on laidback Bob Dylan style, balladeer Jonathan Mann has released the “Ballad of the Montgomery Brawl” exhorting people to “Swim, run, skip and crawl/Down to the Montgomery Brawl” noting that “misplaced white entitlement” can end as “Pride comes before the fall/Down at the Montgomery Brawl.” The chair also appears in Mann’s ode: “You can feel those punches and the men slammed to the ground/The triumph of the human spirit as that chair comes crashing down.”
And the merch market is hysterical. Small entrepreneurs are on the case. I’ve bought a white plastic folding chair model that serves as a phone holder with the words “Alabama Ass Whopping Chair” on the seat.
I bought a key chain with a plastic chair model dressed in sneakers and a tilted baseball cap.
I bought a Christmas tree ornament that I’ve put in my car.
Oh, and today, I got a sticker I might put on my flute case (The padded case cover will hide it. After all, I live in the birthplace of the Klan where mostly while legislatures are kicking black members out for trying to keep children from being murdered in their classrooms).
Each one has come separately from Etsy and each one has brought a big smile to my face. Justice was served, nobody was hurt, the ancestors were vindicated.
Joke: What do you call a leaping basketball player with a folded seat?* (see answer below)
OMG! Now there’s talk that the first folding chair was patented by a black man, Nathaniel Alexander. LOLOLOL, wouldn’t that just put the top on that can of whoop-ass? But as much as this begs to be served up as a delicious full-circle moment, I checked the facts. Turns out, the folding chair already existed, but in 1911, Alexander patented a variant specifically intended for church choirs. It had a book rest in the back that would only deploy when the chair was unfolded.
The first US folding chair patent was John Cram’s in 1855. Awww, that would have been such a nice tie-in, but….WAIT!
Last time I heard, Egypt was in Africa. Why am I mentioning Egypt? The earliest reported folding chair was made for King Tut. Yes, that King Tutankhamen. And for all those wanting a “can’t we all just get along” moment? That chair was made of ebony and ivory.
*Chair Jordan
