After Montgomery dock brawl, ferry Harriott II sails again
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – When he noticed their path was blocked, Steven Clayton Thomason, an entertainer aboard the Harriott II ferry, began a singalong among the more than 200 passengers: I need you to move that boat!
A pontoon boat was blocking the way of the commercial vessel trying to dock. Thomason, known as “Wildcat” among his friends, picked up his cellphone and started recording as the ferry’s co-captain argued with a white man about the obstructed path.
What unfolded next has made the rounds on social media and tested racial tensions in the historic town on the banks of the Alabama River: The co-captain, Damien Pickett, who is Black, was attacked by several white men, falling to the ground as he endured kicks and punches. Soon, the deck was flooded with people coming to his defense – ferry crew, passengers and passersby, most Black – turning the fight over a docking space into a brawl that fell largely along racial lines.
Thomason, 57, who has been performing as a singer on the ferry for more than a decade, said he shouted so long and hard that, days later, his voice is still hoarse.
“Everybody was mad” about the attack on the co-captain, he said. “So the Blacks fight back. Now all of a sudden we’re heroes to the world. But what is Jim Crow really going to do?”
The response to the melee, which has captured headlines across the country, has become a litmus test for Montgomery, a blue city in a red state, the first capital of the Confederacy turned civil rights icon. The city, which is more than 60% Black, elected its first Black mayor in 2019, but still is wrestling with its past.
Montgomery has been trying to establish itself as a destination on the burgeoning civil rights tourism trail, touting its place in the history books. But that depends on tourists and locals feeling safe downtown, local officials acknowledge, which the brawl could make more difficult.
“If any place understands the progress that’s been made going back decades, it’s this city,” Mayor Steven Reed, a Democrat, said as he sat in city hall this week in front of the state flag, which features red bars in honor of the Confederacy.
Ferry service was restored two hours after the melee. Police have charged four people, all white, three men and a woman, with misdemeanor assault in connection with the fight.
But the fallout is continuing. Civil rights activists have held protests outside a mini mart in nearby Selma allegedly owned by one of the men charged.
“This whole thing has woken up a sleeping giant,” said Faya Rose Touré, a Black activist and lawyer who organized the event. Black people “are the ones who keep these white businesses open. If they don’t start supporting us, we won’t keep supporting them.” There will be more protests, she predicted.
The city’s history has helped shape the response to the fight, which took place on a dock once used as a port for the thousands of enslaved people who arrived in the city on steamboats. The port made Montgomery one of the busiest slave-trading centers in the nation, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit Montgomery-based law firm and advocacy group.
Montgomery also was the backdrop for several pivotal battles in the civil rights movement. Just blocks away from the dock is a museum focused on the scourge of lynching, a church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as a pastor, and a former Greyhound bus station that has been converted into a museum about the civil rights-era Freedom Rides.
In Montgomery and the rest of the state, Reed said, racism is, “always just beneath the surface. It doesn’t take much for it to show itself.”
He called videos of the fight “disturbing” and “cringeworthy” but said the FBI didn’t find grounds for hate crime charges.
“From what we’ve seen from the history of our city – a place tied to both the pain and the progress of this nation – it seems to meet the moral definition of a crime fueled by hate, and this kind of violence cannot go unchecked,” Reed said.
“There’s been a major race-and-class divide in this city for a long time,” which his administration is trying to address through increased funding for public education, downtown development and opportunities for Black business owners, he said. These efforts are meant to address “not just the symbols, but the systems that perpetuate that,” he said.
The melee erupted late Saturday after the Harriott II waited more than 40 minutes for the smaller boat to move and Pickett, the co-captain, went ashore to address the problem. Passengers had enjoyed dancing and drinks aboard the 19th-century riverboat as part of Montgomery’s popular Riverfront Park but now were in limbo.
Ferry Captain Jim Kittrell, who is White, said that the White men involved in the fight had caused problems for the Harriott II before and that he believed the attack on Co-Captain Pickett was “racially motivated.”
Richard Roberts, 48; Allen Todd, 23; Todd’s wife, Mary Todd, 21, and Zachery Shipman, 25, all of the Selma, Ala., area, have been charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault. They did not respond to requests for comment. Their attorney, Darron Hendley, said in an email statement: “Commentary would be premature at this point.”
The mayor’s office released the defendants’ mug shots and said in a statement: “The four white assailants who came from out of town to cause chaos and sow divisiveness. … If you violate the sanctity of our community and the safety of our citizens, then you will be brought to justice.”
Reggie Ray, 42, a Black man who wielded a folding chair during the brawl, was charged with disorderly conduct, police said. Ray could not immediately be reached for comment, and it is not clear whether he has an attorney.
From his office in a downtown high-rise, Thomason, the ferry entertainer, pointed down to Commerce Street, where enslaved people were once marched up from the river for sale, and at a statue of Rosa Parks on the corner where she began her historic bus protest. Up on the hill stood the gleaming state capitol.
He says he worries that city leaders will face pressure to bring charges against Black crew members and ferry passengers involved in the fight. He has been keeping tabs by phone on many of them, including 16-year-old Aeron Rudolph who leaped into the water and swam to Pickett’s aid.
Progress is relative for people of color here, said Thomason, an Alabama native, and many local people who grew up during Jim Crow remain wary.
Anwar Price, a 42-year-old Black resident, tried to break up the brawl. He had been at the riverfront market at a back-to-school event with his 14-year-old daughter when the confrontation started.
It is understandable that many saw racist motives behind the incident, he said, but he said that he didn’t hear any racial slurs and that it appeared the White boaters truly thought they were in the right.
“I think in their mind, they were thinking, “Hey, we’re not doing anything wrong. We’re in a public space; y’all are just bothering us,’” he said.
Alabama has made great strides since he moved to the state to attend Alabama State University, a historically Black institution south of downtown Montgomery, he said.
The brawl and its fallout could reopen wounds from the city’s racist past that were just starting to heal, he said. “When the dust settles, as a city, as a community, as a people, we need to sit down and really look into it, what happened,” Price said.
Leslie Mawhorter, of Calera, Alabama, about 55 miles northwest of the capital, was on the ferry celebrating a friend’s birthday when she picked up her phone to record the confrontation.
The White man who confronted Pickett, “had this air about him that he was there first and he wasn’t going to move,” said Mawhorther, who is White. The ferry was too far from the dock for her to hear their exchange, she said, but it didn’t appear that race was the primary cause. “Every state, every population has their classless people with no manners,” she said. “Unfortunately, the world got to see who those people were in Alabama.”
As she left the ferry, Mawhorter saw a woman whom she recognized as having participated in the fight, and said, ‘This is all your fault. You should’ve moved the boat when you were asked and none of this would’ve happened.’” The woman smirked, she said.
The brawl has been the subject of countless memes and online commentaries over the past week. And a few laughs. On Tuesday, at the Statesman bar’s weekly amateur comedy night, all of the acts – Black and White – roasted the city for the confrontation. Brandon Stinson, who tends bar at the after-hours spot, said his mother phoned to compare viral brawl memes.
Stinson said the fracas is embarrassing for Montgomery and worries it will perpetuate racist stereotypes.
“People in the surrounding cities, they view Montgomery as this lawless city,” said Stinson, who lives in the nearby suburb of Prattville.
On Friday evening, as dark storm clouds loomed, more than 200 passengers boarded the Harriott II for the first time since the fight. Law enforcement officers, including the police chief, patrolled the area, along with SWAT officers in tactical gear. Crew members, including Pickett, who was attacked by the White men, and the teenager who had swum to shore help – and has been dubbed “Black Aquaman” on social media – posed for photos.
“Everybody raise your glass to peace and prosperity – and to the co-captain,” Thomason said, and they did. Then Pickett, at Thomason’s urging, raised his cap as he had done during the brawl.
After about two hours, the ferry returned to the dock – this time without interruption. “We restored our peace. We got our boat back today,” Thomason said.
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Felton and Hatzipanagos reported from Washington. Timothy Bella contributed to this report.