riverboat fight in montgomery alabama youtube

Full Video: Viewer records as Montgomery riverfront brawl begins

12 Talk: 'Camp Celebration' Grief Camp

Alabama Live

MPD expands STAR Watch program

Live with Asher Havon from NBC's 'The Voice'

3rd annual 'Changing the Course' Art Show

Gov. Ivey declares March Women's Financial Empowerment Month

Change Alabama to host a health fair

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

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.

Mayor vows justice after massive brawl breaks out on Alabama riverfront

Multiple video clips of a brawl on the riverfront in Montgomery, Alabama, went viral on social media Sunday night, and the mayor reacted with a vow that justice would prevail.

Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed said in a statement Sunday that several people involved in the fighting Saturday evening have been detained.

"Justice will be served," he said.

NBC affiliate WSFA of Montgomery reported that four arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the altercation.

It appears to show brawling that split combatants along racial lines. The fighting appeared to follow a riverboat's attempt to dock where a pontoon boat was moored.

A man who was apparently from the riverboat walked to the pontoon and exchanged words with someone, precipitating an all-out brawl between people associated with each of the watercraft.

Reed indicated that the man from the riverboat was attacked and that those who committed violence against him would face the justice system.

"The Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job," he said.

Police told WSFA that the fight was reported at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The city's Riverfront along the Alabama River is a summertime draw that features the riverboat, an amphitheater, a stadium and a park, among other attractions.

Dennis Romero is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital. 

Steals & Deals: Up to 84% off tennis bracelets, charging tower, more

• TODAY Plaza
• Share this —

• Watch Full Episodes
• Read With Jenna
• Inspirational
• Relationships
• TODAY Table
• Newsletters
• Start TODAY
• Shop TODAY Awards
• Citi Music Series
• Listen All Day

Follow today

More Brands

• On The Show

A waterfront brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, went viral. What happened and why?

The riverfront worker who was attacked said he “held on for dear life” as a group of white boaters jumped him in a large brawl that broke out at the Montgomery Riverfront in Alabama on Aug. 5.

In a handwritten account he filed with law enforcement after the Aug. 5 melee and obtained by NBC News, Dameion Pickett recalled what happened the day when the men refused to move their boat so a dinner cruise riverboat could dock.

“A tall, older white guy came over and hit me in the face. I took my hat off and threw it in the air,” he wrote. “Somebody hit me from behind. I started choking the older guy in front of me so he couldn’t anymore, pushing him back at the same time.”

Pickett has not made a public statement regarding the incident and did not respond to NBC News' request for comment.

Videos that went viral on social media showed a group of white men attacking Pickett. The footage caused an outcry, with the Montgomery mayor addressing the altercation and police issuing arrest warrants.

Allen Todd, 23, and Zachery Shipman, 25, have been charged with one misdemeanor count of assault in the third degree, a spokesperson for the Montgomery Police Department said.

Another man, Richard Roberts, 48, faces two third-degree assault charges and turned himself in on Aug. 8.

A fourth suspect in the case, Mary Todd, 21, turned herself in on Aug. 10 and was charged with misdemeanor third-degree assault.

A fifth suspect, Reggie Ray, 42, turned himself in on Aug. 11 and was charged with disorderly conduct. Police had previously sought Ray after he was seen wielding a folding chair in the melee on social media videos.

So what exactly happened? Read on for a full explanation of this now-viral incident.

What happened at the Montgomery Riverfront

A large brawl broke out Saturday, Aug. 5, shortly before 7 p.m. at the Alabama capital after Pickett attempted to clear a dock along the river so that the Harriott II Riverboat could dock, witnesses told NBC News . The brawl was fueled by alcohol and adrenaline, witnesses also said.

When a group of rowdy boaters refused to move their pontoon at the Montgomery Riverfront, they attacked Pickett when he untied their boat to make way for the riverboat, witnesses said.

In video shared with NBC News , after a group of what appears to be white men ran along the dock to attack the worker, who is Black, more people joined in and appeared to defend Pickett. Other footage shared with NBC News shows people punching and shoving one another, with one person falling into the water as police struggled to contain the chaos.

The Riverfront is a popular destination with a park, stadium, amphitheater and riverboat.

What police say about the fight

Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert, in a news conference on Aug. 8 , confirmed that a group of private white boaters had attacked a Black dockworker, identified as Pickett. Later, police would identify Pickett as the assistant boat captain of the riverboat.

He had been trying to move the private boaters' pontoon to make way for the riverboat.

As passengers aboard the riverboat — more than 200 — waited at least 30 minutes, Pickett tried to get the rowdy private boaters to move. Several members of the private pontoon group then attacked Pickett, Albert said.

Albert added that police arrived on the scene at 7:18 p.m. local time — about 18 minutes after the riverboat captain had called. He said 13 people were detained, questioned and then released.

What did the attacked dockworker say about the incident?

In a handwritten statement filed with police and obtained by NBC News, Pickett said he asked the group “five or six times” to move their boat.

When he and a dockhand were ignored and given the finger, he says, they untied the group’s pontoon boat, moved it “three steps to the right” and re-tied it to a post so the Harriott II could dock.

“By that time, two people ran up behind me,” Pickett wrote, adding that a man in a red hat yelled, “Don’t touch that boat motherf---er or we will beat your ass.”

He said the men continued to threaten him and then one of them called another man over.

“They both were very drunk,” Pickett wrote, adding that then the pontoon boat owner went over “started getting loud … He got into my face. ‘This belongs to the f---ing public.’ I told him this was a city dock.”

That’s when the brawl began. Pickett wrote, “A tall, older white guy came over and hit me in the face. I took my hat off and threw it in the air. Somebody hit me from behind. I started choking the older guy in front of me so he couldn’t anymore, pushing him back at the same time.”

Adding, “Then the guy in the red shorts came up and tackled me … I went to the ground. I think I hit one of them.”

Sharing more recollections from the fight, he said, “I can’t tell you how long it lasted. I grabbed one of them and just held on for dear life.”

Pickett was eventually helped by other people but noticed the brawl was getting out of hand, writing, “One of my co-workers had jumped into the water and was pushing people and fighting.”

He added that his nephew joined the melee and he had also seen his sister being choked during the fight.

As more chaos ensued, the riverboat had not been tied to the dock but Pickett helped the passengers off the boat. He wrote that he apologized “for the inconvenience. They all said I did nothing wrong.”

“Some of them were giving me cards with their names and numbers on it. Some said they had it all on film, so I pointed them out to MPD,” he added. After the altercation, he was treated at the emergency room where he was treated for bruised ribs and bumps on his head.

What witnesses say about the brawl

Witnesses told NBC News a similar version of events. Christa Owen said she was aboard the Harriott II with her husband and daughter when the brawl broke out.

“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 added.

Owen was among those who recorded the altercations, explaining that it was “inexcusable behavior.”

Additionally, Leslie Mawhorter also on Harriott II, added: “They just didn’t think the rules applied to them. It was so avoidable. This never had to have happened. Everything just spiraled from there.”

“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,” Mawhorter continued.

Have police made any arrests?

Four men and one woman are facing charges , according to police: Richard Roberts, 48; Reggie Ray, 42; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25, and Mary Todd, 21.

“There was no need for this event to take the path it did,” Albert told reporters earlier this week. “The people of Montgomery, we’re better than that. We’re a fun city, and we don’t want this type of activity to shed a dark eye on what this city’s all about.”

Was the fight racially motivated?

In the press conference on Aug. 8, Albert said investigators do not believe the incident was racially motivated.

He said that the local FBI and district attorney’s offices are involved in the ongoing investigation. 

“I don’t think you can judge any community by any one incident. I think it’s important for us to address this as an isolated incident, one that was avoidable,” Albert said. “One that was brought on by individuals who chose the wrong path of action.”

What the mayor of Montgomery said about the altercation

On Sunday, Aug. 6, Mayor Steven L. Reed released a statement saying that “justice will be served” after individuals attacked “a man who was doing his job.”

“Last night, the Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job. Warrants have been signed and justice will be served,” the statement posted on social media read. “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.”

“Those who choose violent actions will be held accountable by our criminal justice system,” the statement concluded.

Reed shared how he felt about the incident during a press conference on Aug. 7.

"I feel like it’s an unfortunate incident. Our statement that we put out the other day is that it’s something that shouldn’t have happened and it’s something that we’re investigating right now," Reed said. "We’ll continue to go through that process before we take any additional steps."

When asked if Reed thought the incident was racially charged, he said the brawl is still under investigation, and that authorities are "investigating all angles."

The investigation is ongoing.

EDITOR'S NOTE (Aug. 11, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. ET): Previous police statements listed the man attacked as Damien Pickett and one of the suspects as Zachary Shipman. On Aug. 11, officials corrected their names' spellings to Dameion Pickett and Zachery Shipman. This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling.

Liz Calvario is a Los Angeles-based reporter and editor for TODAY.com who covers entertainment, pop culture and trending news.

Anna Kaplan is a news and trending reporter for TODAY.com.

Sam Kubota is a senior digital editor and journalist for TODAY Digital based in Los Angeles. She joined NBC News in 2019.

What we know about the Montgomery Riverfront brawl

A group of White boaters attacked a Black co-captain on Saturday on a dock at Riverfront Park in Montgomery, Ala., sparking a massive brawl that resulted in assault charges and the city’s mayor calling for justice to be served to the boaters “for attacking a man who was doing his job.”

Three White men were charged with misdemeanor assault over the brawl after 13 people were initially detained by police for interviews , Montgomery Police Chief Darryl J. Albert said at a news conference with Mayor Steven L. Reed (D) on Tuesday. Those charged were Richard Roberts, 48; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25. Several people were detained after video clips of the brawl went viral on social media over the weekend.

Reed said in a statement Sunday that police “acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job.” He called the fight “an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred.”

Here’s what we know so far about the incident:

• Men charged in Montgomery brawl had been ‘trouble’ for riverboat, captain says August 10, 2023 Men charged in Montgomery brawl had been ‘trouble’ for riverboat, captain says August 10, 2023
• How oral storytelling helped a blind man see the Montgomery brawl August 12, 2023 How oral storytelling helped a blind man see the Montgomery brawl August 12, 2023
• Racial tensions linger in Montgomery after dock brawl August 12, 2023 Racial tensions linger in Montgomery after dock brawl August 12, 2023

• New Terms of Use
• New Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices
• Closed Caption Policy
• Accessibility Statement

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2024 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Legal Statement . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper .

Brawl at Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock caught on video

Fight breaks out over apparent docking of pontoon boat at riverfront park.

Massive brawl at Montgomery, Alabama riverfront dock caught on video

A fight broke out on a riverfront dock in Montgomery, Alabama, over the apparent docking of a pontoon boat. (Credit: Christa)

A massive brawl broke out on a riverfront dock in Montgomery, Alabama, on Saturday evening over what appeared to be the docking of a pontoon boat, and the city’s mayor says several "reckless" individuals were detained.

The fight between a group of individuals and a man, who appeared to be a dockworker, was captured on video around 7 p.m. by onlookers aboard a nearby boat at Riverfront Park.

The woman recording the video can be heard saying that a worker was moving a black pontoon boat that had docked after the apparent owners were told they could not leave the boat in that area.

As the worker begins to move the boat on his own, a group of individuals approach and begin to argue with the man, the video showed. The verbal altercation then turns physical when one individual suddenly punches the worker in the head. 

DIRT BIKE RIDER WANTED IN PENNSYLVANIA AFTER ‘INTENTIONALLY’ HITTING MAN, RUNNING HIM OVER TWICE: POLICE

The dockworker, pictured right dressed in a white shirt, is punched in the head by a man following an argument. (Christa)

Other individuals in the group rush the worker and begin punching and kicking him while he is on the ground. Onlookers intervene and begin pulling the individuals off the worker, who then is seen standing up on his own and walking down the dock.

The fight escalated after a verbal altercation over the apparent docking of a pontoon boat along the river. (Christa)

Fox News Digital reached out to the Montgomery Police Department but did not immediately hear back.

Other individuals rush the dockworker and tackle him to the ground. (Christa)

Mayor Steven L. Reed responded to the incident Sunday with a post on social media.

Bystanders intervene and attempt to break up the fight. (Christa)

"Last night, the Montgomery Police Department acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job," Reed wrote. "Warrants have been signed and justice will be served."

NYPD SEEK HELP IDENTIFYING MORE SUSPECTS AFTER TWITCH INFLUENCER KAI CENAT GIVEAWAY DEVOLVES INTO MASSIVE RIOT

Reed went on say that the "unfortunate incident" never should have happened.

The worker is able to stand up on his own and walk away down the dock. (Christa)

"As our police department investigates these intolerable actions, we should not become desensitized to violence of any kind in our community," the mayor wrote. "Those who choose violence will be held accountable by our criminal justice system."

Montgomery police said the incident happened at the 200 block of Coosa Street, and that several people were detained, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

Four active warrants were issued, with the possibility of more after investigators review additional video of the incident, police said.

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Authorities have yet to release the names of those who were detained or how many there were.

Fox News' "Antisemitism Exposed" newsletter brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world.

You've successfully subscribed to this newsletter!

@itstoushiebabyy/Twitter @ace876media.ent1/TikTok

‘Black Aquaman’: Riverboat crew member who swam into brawl on dock branded hero

The footage is all over the internet..

David Covucci

Posted on Aug 7, 2023   Updated on Sep 14, 2023, 11:09 am CDT

An apparent crew member of a riverboat in Alabama became a breakout internet sensation after he swam to the rescue of a co-worker who was being attacked by a group of pontoon boaters.

For his efforts, he’s been dubbed “Black Aquaman,” among a series of other nicknames.

Riverboat fight videos explode online

The viral drama went down Saturday night in Montgomery, Alabama, and according to a series of videos and reports, a group of boaters refused to remove their pontoon boat from a pier where the city’s riverboat, the Harriot II, was supposed to dock.

Watching from the riverboat, a number of people began chanting the lyrics “Move, Bitch,” a popular song by Ludacris, at the pontoon boaters, ratcheting up the tense environment.

Attempting to move the pontoon himself, a Black staffer was then assaulted by the white group.

@ace876media.ent1 This is how it started #MontgomeryRiverfront #BoatBrawl ♬ original sound – Ace876media

As the fight played out, one of the crew members appears to have leaped off the riverboat and swum to the dock to aid in the fight.

Black Aquaman gone get in hella trouble once his momma catch him pic.twitter.com/WxgOkPzExF — Wekglobal (@wekglobal) August 7, 2023

The crew members of the riverboard, along with others on the boat after it docked, then went to confront the owners of the pontoon boat, where another skirmish broke out.

In it, what appears to be a crew member of the riverboat throws a woman into the water, as police struggle to contain the situation.

** Backstory, the people on the pontoons refused to move so the riverboat could dock. A crew member from the riverboat went to the dock via a smaller boat and the people in both pontoons attacked him first. Posted by Heather Shirley Venable on  Sunday, August 6, 2023

@barcardg #AlabamaBoatBrawl #Brawl #BoatCruise #BoatsOfTikTok #Boats #BoatsGoneWild #MontgomeryBoatRide #BoysGoneWild #BlackTikTok #BlackTikTokCommmunity #BarCar Ⓜ️EⓂ️🅿️HIS GO FOLLOW ME ON #FB @ #BarCarPromotions FOR MORE #Blogs & #GirlzFromTheHood GO FOLLOW ME ON #IG @ #BarCar_ & #Boss1Bitch #TheNoels #Memphis #MemphisTN #MemphisTennessee #901 #901Memphis #DannielleGriffin #DowntownGirl #DownTownMemphis #FoodCritic #Toxic #GoViral #CapCut #DannielleNoel #Workout #Dance #FitTok #DannielleGriffin66 #fy #ForYou #MemphisTikTok #Foodie #Foodies #SoulFood #SoulFoodie #SoulFoodies #foodiesoftiktok #memphisfoodie #memphisfoodies #foodtok #soulfoodtok #fypage #SouthMemphisMade #memphistn #memphistn901 #901 #fyp #viral #ForYouPage #DannielleGriffin #DannielleNoel #DannielleGriffin66 #BarCarENT #DowntownMemphis #MidtownMemphis #FoodCritic #FoodAndBeverage #MemphisTikToker #MemphisTok #blueeyes #mydolcemoment #nextleveldish #GirlzFromTheHood #BlackTikTokCommunity #BlackGirlFollowTrain #PrettyGirls #BlackGirlFollowTrain #BlackGirlTikTok #BlackTikTok #MemphisBaddie #Baddies #Baddie #baddietiktok #MemphisBaddies #SouthMemphisBaddies #40ClubMom #40ClubMommy #CatsOfTikTok #BlackLivesMatter ♬ original sound – Dannielle Noel

But the breakout star of the video was the crew member who desperately swam to offer aid on the dock.

He’s been dubbed not only Black Aquaman, but also Michael B. Phelps, a play on Michael B. Jordan, Evander Holyfish, and Lil’ Bass X.

Top 10 names given to this young hero: 10. Black Aquaman 9. JJ Fish 8. Michael B Phelps 7. Captain Hook 6. Catfish Cuz 5. Kofi Kingfish 4. Tyrone Lochte 3. 21 Tilapia 2. Lil' Namor 1. Shaquille O'Gills pic.twitter.com/a6c4lbe4HP — Mike Kincaide (@mikekincaide) August 7, 2023

Lil Bass X — Hugo Castro (@djhugocastro) August 7, 2023

The scene itself got compared to something out of the Avengers .

It’s giving Avengers Endgame! Frame it pic.twitter.com/Lv9LX74ptm — Dawn (@_dawnmontgomery) August 6, 2023

The crew members and the boaters have yet to be identified, and Montgomery police say they are investigating the matter and will file the appropriate charges. The riverboat fight videos apparently helped lead to multiple arrests, according to Montgomery news outlet WSFA .

Update: Several days later, three men were charged with assault in the 3rd degree. Richard Roberts, a 48-year-old white male; Allen Todd, a 23-year-old white male; and Zachary Shipman, 25 year-old white male.

David Covucci is the senior politics and technology editor at the Daily Dot, covering the nexus between Washington and Silicon Valley. His work has appeared in Vice, the Huffington Post, Jezebel, Gothamist, and other publications. He is particularly interested in hearing any tips you have. Reach out at [email protected].

Featured Local Savings

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]

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

‘A narrative of triumph’: a powerful 17-acre site in Alabama remembers enslavement

The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is an expansive new experience that aims to pay an honest tribute to courage and resilience as an American equivalent to a Holocaust memorial

“T he morning after our whipping, we all had to go to work, as if nothing had happened. I was so sore I could hardly do anything,” recalled James Matthews, who, like many enslaved people after a severe whipping, ran away into the woods. “I have known a great many who never came back; they were whipped so bad they never got well, but died in the woods, and their bodies have been found by people hunting. White men come in sometimes with collars and chains and bells, which they had taken from dead slaves. They just take off their irons and then leave them, and think no more about them.”

This quotation from Matthews’s Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave (1838) appears on a panel in the woodland setting of the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamless blend of art and history opening on the banks of the Alabama River on 27 March. It is one of many first-person accounts that serve as a rebuke to historical amnesia, to deletion by indifference, to those who “think no more about them”. The park’s artefacts and sculptures and its climactic monument are a radical act of remembrance rooted in a sense of place.

Whereas commemoration of the Holocaust has a locus in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and other sites across Europe, tracing the memory of the 10 million Black people enslaved in America can often feel like a succession of absences. Plantations survive but with a built environment that makes it hard to avoid the centrality of the enslaver. Countless graves and cemeteries of the formerly enslaved are buried under interstate highways, shopping malls or car parks. Some African Americans travel to west Africa in search of a tangible connection with ancestors.

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit organisation that already runs the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery , seeks to close this gap with the 17-acre site built for an estimated $12m to $15m. Visitors can arrive by boat on the same waters that once trafficked enslaved people, then step inside 170-year-old dwellings from cotton plantations as well as recreations of holding pens and railway carriages. They will hear trains running on nearby railway tracks built by enslaved hands.

Bryan Stevenson , executive director of the EJI, says in an interview: “We’ve done a poor job in America of reckoning with our history of slavery. There just aren’t places people can go and have an honest encounter with that history that centres on the lives of enslaved people. In Europe, what’s happened in Germany, in Berlin and other cities, has made Holocaust memorials and sites of remembrance such powerful places. When you go to the camps, it’s hard to avoid the power and the weight of that history.

“We’ve avoided confronting the weight of our history in ways that have undermined our ability to achieve the sort of progress and justice that many of us want. I do hope that people will come here and be sobered by the history but also inspired by the people who survived, endured, persevered and went on to commit to building an America that has so much potential.”

The river is the first artefact. Forming just north of Montgomery and flowing 318 miles, it was bordered by plantations and forced labour camps and traversed for decades by boats carrying 200 enslaved people at a time. To be trafficked south by steamship – in overcrowded conditions with little protection from the elements – was to be “sold down the river” .

One enslaved person forced to work on a river boat recalled: “A drove of slaves on a southern steamboat, bound for the cotton or sugar regions, is an occurrence so common, that no one, not even the passengers, appear to notice it, though they clank their chains at every step.”

Once disembarked, visitors follow a path through the sculpture park’s native elm, oak, sycamore, cottonwood and chinaberry trees and survey art in an evocative natural landscape. Eva Oertli and Beat Huber’s 2014 concrete sculpture, The Caring Hand , presents five giant fingers protruding from the earth around a tree as the river flows beyond.

It is one of several pieces – about half of which were specially commissioned – that achieve the monumentality the space demands. At the entrance, Simone Leigh’s Brick House is a 16ft-tall bronze bust of a Black woman without eyes and a torso combining the forms of a skirt and a clay house (previously seen along New York City’s High Line). The Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s bronze We Am Very Cold depicts several figures, including a child, contorted as if in a perpetual storm. David Tanych’s steel Free at Last is an 8ft-diameter ball with a giant chain and open shackle.

Kehinde Wiley’s An Archaeology of Silence stands 17.5ft high. Invoking the visual language of heroes and martyrs in European historical art, it depicts a shirtless man in jeans and sneakers draped limply over a regal horse, acknowledging the legacy of slavery in lynchings, police brutality and other violence against Black bodies – yet with a grace and vitality that hints at resurrection.

Brad Spencer’s From the Ground Up depicts a life-size man, woman and child made entirely of brick. An accompanying panel notes that the tiny fingerprints of enslaved children who turned bricks as they dried can be seen today on the bricks of historic buildings in Charleston, South Carolina. Visitors to the park can see and touch bricks made by enslaved people 175 years ago.

The park performs a further act of excavation. For more than three centuries enslavers often decided what enslaved people were called; the US Census recorded them only with a number. After the civil war, some 4 million newly freed Black people were able to formally record a surname in the 1870 census. All 122,000 of these surnames are inscribed on the National Monument to Freedom, a 43ft-tall, 150ft-long wall angled like an open book, its concrete clad with a bronze-gold metal facade that changes with the light.

Stevenson, 64, a public interest lawyer revered for his work on prison reform and death row, comments: “The enduring truth about enslaved people was their capacity to love, to find and create family and relationships that allowed them to survive and endure and overcome the brutality and I think that should be celebrated.

“There’s a narrative of triumph that we need to acknowledge and the monument is a gesture toward that, as a physical space but also as a way of naming names, making personal, making human this history. For people who are descendants to come and see that name and have a tangible connection made to that legacy is important and necessary.”

There is no more fitting venue for the park than Montgomery, capital of Alabama (a state that Donald Trump won by 35 percentage points in 2020) and crucible of American contradictions. It has witnessed one of the most conspicuous slave trading communities in the nation but also an act of courage by Rosa Parks that ignited the civil rights movement (a statue of Parks marks the spot where in 1955 she boarded the bus where she would refuse to give up her seat to a white man).

On a six-acre rise overlooking the city, Stevenson built a memorial – comprising 800 corten steel monuments – to more than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950. But this is also a city where the Alabama state capitol (built by enslaved brickmakers and bricklayers) still features a heroic monument to the Confederacy, the breakaway southern states that fought to preserve slavery, and a statue of Jefferson Davis, inaugurated here as its first president in 1861.

Inside there are still portraits of the Confederate general Robert E Lee and Governor George Wallace, who declared in 1963: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Confederate banknotes are still displayed in the old treasurer’s office while eight murals inside the capitol dome still include “Secession and the Confederacy, Inauguration of President Jefferson Davis, 1861” and “Wealth and Leisure Produce the Golden Period of Antebellum Life in Alabama, 1840-1860”.

Last week, at the nearby First White House of the Confederacy , a tour guide could be heard enthusing to white tourists, “You’re on the Jefferson Davis trail!” as a Black woman entered wearing a T-shirt that said: “But still, like air, I’ll rise – Maya Angelou.”

Rarely is the American paradox felt so keenly. In the jarring juxtaposition of progressivism versus revanchism, of the beauty of Stevenson’s vision versus the mausoleums of white supremacy, how does he avoid a permanent sense of whiplash? “We’re in an era of transition,” he muses philosophically. “When I moved here in the 1980s, there were 59 markers and monuments to the Confederacy and you couldn’t find the word slave, slavery or enslavement anywhere in the city landscape.

“It was a part of a history that no one acknowledged, let alone discussed, and we are still under the cloud of a historical narrative that is false and unhealthy about the greatness of ‘the lost cause’ where we romanticise this effort to preserve slavery and to maintain white supremacy. That has to be challenged and we’re going to have to move from that and you’re slowly beginning to see that.”

Until this year, Stevenson notes, the three biggest high schools in Montgomery, with student populations that are 98% Black, were named after Confederates – but not any more. “There is some sobering around this effort to celebrate people who did horrific things, just like it would be unconscionable to go to Germany and see Adolf Hitler statues or monuments to the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

“We’ve got to reckon with the fact that we are glorifying people who were insurrectionist, tried to destroy this nation, represented a commitment to a racial order that was corrupt by this false idea that Black people are not as good as white people. With each year and each decade, we’re going to have to do more to get to a more honest space.

“That hasn’t happened in the way that it will need to happen in Alabama but it is happening . We are on that path and I don’t think that we can be a schizophrenic about history. History is history and we need to reckon with it and, when we reckon with it, we’ll find the courage to celebrate people – white people included – who did extraordinarily honourable things.”

Stevenson, author of the 2014 memoir Just Mercy , which became a 2019 film starring Michael B Jordan , likes to work on his historical projects covertly until they are ready to go public, thereby avoiding prejudgment by the unnerved, the resentful and the downright racist. You could call him a stealth truth bomber. The community then generally embraces his efforts, not least because they attract visitors who boost the local economy.

The Legacy Museum, which opened in 2018 and moved to a new, greatly expanded building on the site of a former cotton warehouse three years later, has few original artefacts but draws a compelling line from slavery to mass incarceration through narrative, interactive, newspaper excerpts, photos, statistics, videos, works of art and imagination. A haunting exhibit contains 800 jars of soil collected from lynching sites around the country as part of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project .

Now it is the turn of the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park to make the intangible tangible. Bricks. Names. Elms, oaks, sycamores, cottonwoods and chinaberries. A river and a railway. Love in the midst of agony. Speaking in Montgomery in 1965, Martin Luther King observed: “The climactic conflicts always were fought and won on Alabama soil.”

Stevenson observes: “The existence and the emergence of these truth-telling spaces allows us to say, look, if we can do this in Montgomery, Alabama, there’s not another place in America that can say, ‘They did that in Montgomery but we couldn’t possibly do it here.’ That’s the power of this place collectively because we are steeped in that long history of denial and resistance to ending slavery, to ending lynching, to ending segregation. We have an opportunity to be on the other side of this movement to commit to truth that will give us a unique credibility and power.”

The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park opens in Montgomery, Alabama, on 27 March

Most viewed

• Anniston/Gadsden

Troy football coach Gerad Parker on Chris Lewis: ‘He’s a fighter’

• Published: Mar. 18, 2024, 3:51 p.m.

Troy's Chris Lewis (6) is currently undergoing treatment for bone cancer at Children's of Alabama hospital in Birmingham. (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

• Creg Stephenson | [email protected]

Troy begins spring football practice on Tuesday without arguably its best overall player, but Chris Lewis is never far from the minds of those who will be on the field during the next month.

Lewis is currently undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of bone cancer in his left leg, with which he was diagnosed at the end of the 2023 regular season. The Kentucky transfer had a breakout season at wide receiver for the Trojans last year, but football is currently on hold while he deals with such a serious health situation.

First-year Troy coach Gerad Parker said Monday he’s spoken with Lewis several times since his diagnosis, which he first publicly revealed last week. Parker, the former Notre Dame offensive coordinator hired in December to replace Jon Sumrall, said he’s been impressed with Lewis’ positive attitude.

“It speaks volumes about who he is as a human being first, and then that he’s a fighter,” Parker said. “… He loves the game that has done so much for him. And he has aspirations of fighting this thing, getting back on the field with us and playing. All we can do right now is do our part to support him, and I think Trojan Nation has done that.

“… This is all about his fight, not ours. He has been so brave, so courageous and has had a positive outlook every time I’ve texted or called or went to go see him. He’s in the right frame of mind to defeat this thing.”

Lewis, from Pleasant Grove, has been undergoing a 10-week course of chemotherapy for osteosarcoma at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham. He’s scheduled for surgery on April 3 in hopes of removing the tumor that was discovered in his left femur (upper leg bone).

Lewis told ESPN in a story published last week that he was optimistic he could return to the football field, whether this season or in the future. He caught 32 passes for 735 yards for the Sun Belt Conference champions in 2023, leading the league with 10 touchdown receptions and finishing among the national leaders in yards per catch (22.9).

“There is going to be a lot coming at him over the next 7 to 10 days, some scans and stuff and then a surgery date to follow,” Parker said. “Those are two big things that are coming at us that we are ready to support him on. We’ll see how those two things go and then we’ll know more when that happens.”

Lewis has set up a GoFundMe account to help offset medical expenses. He’s hoping to raise $150,000.

Troy holds the first of 15 spring football practices on Tuesday morning. The annual T-Day spring game is set for April 27 at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.