Detroit Today: Alabama riverfront brawl evokes visceral public reactions

Over the past few days, a video of a massive brawl in Montgomery, Ala. has circulated across social media. The incident occurred after white boaters docked their boat in an area that was reserved for a commercial riverboat.

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The riverboat’s Black co-captain attempted to move the private boat so his vessel would have enough room to dock in its reserved spot, for which white boaters began beating and kicking him on the docks. Ultimately, a group of African Americans standing nearby intervened — one even swimming across a narrow channel to join the fight — leading to a brawl along racial lines.

When considering the historical context of these events — occurring in the heart of the deep South and the area’s roots of slavery, racism and bigotry — the videos evoke a visceral, emotional response.

The brawl in Alabama has people reflecting on the history of white mob violence around the country, including here in Detroit.

Historians Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Jamon Jordan joined Detroit Today to discuss the racial history that sets the backdrop for the brawl that broke out in Alabama.

Guests

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an Ohio State University history professor who specializes in civil rights and the Black Power movement. Jeffries says this act of violence was enabled by historical oppression against Black Americans and that underlying racist attitudes towards Black people often promote aggression.

“You can’t divorce the individual acts from the context of history,” says Jeffries.

Jamon Jordan is the city of Detroit’s official historian and founder of Black Scroll Network History and Tours. Jordan stresses that anti-Black racism isn’t unique to the South — mob violence against Black citizens was common even in Detroit’s past.

“Almost all of that is a national phenomenon,” Jordan says of slavery and Jim Crow.