riverboat co captain

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Montgomery riverboat co-captain charged with assault months after brawl

• Published: Nov. 08, 2023, 7:25 p.m.

Screengrab from Montgomery riverfront brawl.

• Howard Koplowitz | [email protected]

The co-captain of the Montgomery riverboat involved in the August brawl between the vessel’s Black crew members and passengers and white occupants of a pontoon boat has been charged with third-degree assault, according to court records.

The charges against Harriott II co-captain Dameion Pickett, who has previously been identified in court records as Damien Pickett, were filed in Montgomery Municipal Court on Oct. 26.

Neither Montgomery police nor the Montgomery city attorney publicly announced the charges.

Pickett is charged with third-degree assault and is scheduled to be arraigned on Nov. 21, according to municipal court records.

The complainant in Pickett’s case was listed as Zachery “Chase” Shipman, who was on the pontoon boat and also faces a third-degree assault charge in connection with the brawl.

Pickett is listed as a victim in the charges against the pontoon boat occupants.

The viral Aug. 5 fight started at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park when crew members of the Harriott II were unable to dock the cruise boat because the pontoon boat from Selma was in the way.

The large fight captured on viral videos showed Pickett, who is Black, attacked by a group of white people as other Black people rushed to his defense.

Crystal Warren, the mother of a 16-year-old deckhand involved in the melee, claimed in a police report that racial slurs were used against Pickett during the brawl.

“You could here (sic) men yelling ‘f--k that n----r’ and the men came down to fight my son,” she wrote in her report. But in court in October, Warren testified that she did not hear a racial slur.

Pickett was in the courtroom late last month, when pontoon boat occupant Richard Roberts, 48, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges and apologized to Pickett for his actions that day.

“I think under different circumstances we could be friends,” Roberts told Pickett. “You might not think so.”

“I know you were doing your job,” Roberts added.

Roberts received a four-month suspended sentence. Of that, he will serve 32 days in jail in Perry County, with that time to be served on weekends. The sentence also calls for 100 hours of community service and court costs

A third pontoon boat occupant, Mary Todd, pleaded guilty to harassment late last month. She received a 15-day suspended sentence and was ordered to complete an anger management program and pay court costs.

Another defendant in the incident, Reggie Ray, who is Black and was seen wielding a folding chair in the melee , was charged with disorderly conduct.

All of the defendants who have been arraigned have pleaded not guilty.

Montgomery Brawl

• Riverboat co-captain pleads not guilty to assault in Montgomery riverfront brawl
• ‘I was not trying to fight,’ says man who filed charge against Montgomery riverboat co-captain
• Roy Wood Jr.’s Halloween costume on ‘The View’? A folding chair, as nod to Montgomery riverfront brawl

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Men charged in Montgomery brawl had been ‘trouble’ for riverboat, captain says

The three White men charged with assault Tuesday after they attacked a Black riverboat co-captain in Montgomery, Ala. , and ignited a brawl largely along racial lines had previously caused problems for the Harriott II, the vessel’s captain said, and were repeatedly asked to move their pontoon boat so the riverboat could dock.

Harriott II captain Jim Kittrell told media outlets he believed the attack on co-captain Damien Pickett over the weekend was “racially motivated.”

Richard Roberts, 48; Allen Todd, 23; and Zachery Shipman, 25, were charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault in the attack on Pickett at a dock in Riverfront Park, Montgomery Police Chief Darryl J. Albert said at a news conference.

All three turned themselves in, Montgomery Police Maj. Saba Coleman told The Washington Post. She added that Roberts also has a warrant pending for striking a 16-year-old White boy, and that Reggie Gray, a 42-year-old Black man who was seen on video hitting people with a folding chair during the brawl, has not turned himself in after police called on him to do so.

White men charged with assaulting Black man in Montgomery Riverfront brawl

Authorities said that they had consulted with the FBI and would not be able to charge the White men with a hate crime or with inciting a riot. But Kittrell, who told WACV in Montgomery that riverboat staff previously “had trouble” with the boaters from Selma, Ala., emphasized that he believed the assault on Pickett, 43, was due to racism.

“The White guys that attacked my deckhand — and he was a senior deckhand first mate — I can’t think of any other reason they attacked him other than it being racially motivated,” Kittrell, who is White, told the Daily Beast on Tuesday. “All he did was move their boat up three feet. It makes no sense to have six people try to beat the snot out of you just because you moved their boat up a few feet. In my opinion, the attack on Damien was racially motivated.”

He added to radio show “ News & Views with Joey Clark ” that the brawl after the initial assault of Pickett “was not a Black-and-White thing.”

Neither Pickett nor Kittrell, 62, immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday morning.

Albert announced the charges against Roberts, Todd and Shipman three days after videos went viral of the brawl, which was decried by Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed (D) as “an unfortunate incident which never should have occurred.”

“This is not indicative of who we are,” said Reed, Montgomery’s first Black mayor. On Wednesday, Reed criticized Todd and Shipman after they “did not honor their agreement to surrender to authorities,” and said that police “will do what it takes to bring them to justice.”

What we know about the Montgomery Riverfront brawl

Videos taken by onlookers and spread around the internet showed the Black co-captain, Pickett, arguing with one of the pontoon boaters on Saturday as a second White man charges at Pickett and hits him in the face. Pickett then tosses his cap into the air before the two hit each other. Almost immediately, Pickett is swarmed by several White men on the dock who throw punches while the Black man was on the ground, according to the videos posted online.

White and Black people on the dock and shore appear to jump in to try to help Pickett, and someone appears to jump off the riverboat and swim to the dock to help the co-captain. As the initial tussle calmed down, videos appeared to show a group of Black men confronting the White boaters. That fighting lasted more than a minute, with one of the Black men — allegedly Gray — being recorded hitting a White woman in the head with a folding chair and then being surrounded by police. One person seemed to get punched off the dock into the water.

Police detained 13 people for questioning, then released them, Albert said. The police chief said that “no stone was unturned” in deciding ultimately to not charge Roberts, Todd and Shipman with more serious charges.

“We examined this over a period of time, not only that night but since that night,” he told reporters. “At this time, based on the way the statutes read the laws are crafted, we were unable to present any inciting a riot or racially-biased charges.”

Kittrell has captained the Harriott II for about 13 years, steering the riverboat since it was originally known as Savannah River Queen of Savannah, Ga., according to the Selma Times-Journal . He told the Daily Beast he’s known Pickett for about 10 years during their time together on the Harriott II, a 19th-century riverboat offering dinner, dancing and live entertainment as part of Montgomery’s popular Riverfront Park.

The riverboat captain said this week that the three White men were part of a group of pontoon boaters from Selma that he’s had issues with in recent years.

“We’ve had trouble with them in the past, but just like jokey things,” he said Monday to the Montgomery radio station.

He pointed to an instance a couple of years ago when one of the riverboat’s golf carts was missing after returning from a cruise. Kittrell said the group had taken it and left it in an odd place: the lobby of a Hampton Inn.

“We looked at the Hampton Inn video, found out who did it, and we had them come down,” the riverboat captain told the radio station. “We were going to press charges then, but the police talked us out of it.”

But what unfolded Saturday was different, he said. When Kittrell noticed the pontoon boat was partially blocking the area where the riverboat docks, he asked the pontoon boat’s passengers over the PA system to move the boat “about five times,” he recalled. After he threatened to call the police on the boaters, “they started shooting birds at us,” which led him to call law enforcement, Kittrell told the radio station.

“I was nice as a peach when I was talking to them at first: ‘Please, help me out here, fellas. Move the boat up a little bit,’” he told the Daily Beast.

Not long after Pickett attempted to push the pontoon boat forward a few feet, Kittrell saw his colleague get attacked by the men from Selma.

“We’re 40 yards or 30 yards away from the dock watching all of this. There’s nothing we can do,” he said to the radio station. “About that time, another guy comes running up. And within a minute or so, it was an all-out brawl. And then I saw some more guys coming, and I said, ‘Oh. Thank God. They’re going to break it up.’ But instead of breaking it up, they jumped on him too. So, at one time, it was like six, seven guys on my deckhand that was trying to move the boat.”

While Kittrell maintained that the attack on Pickett was racially motivated, he emphasized that the rest of the brawl, which appeared to be along racial lines, was not the same as the initial encounter. He said he was thankful for the Harriott II staff for standing up and coming to Pickett’s aid during the attack.

“It was just shipmates trying to help a shipmate. They could’ve been little green men, for all they cared,” he told the Daily Beast. “When they attacked Damien, my crew was gonna jump out and do the best they could to help him out. It was my crew against the people who attacked their shipmate, that’s all it was.”

• 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

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Alabama riverboat co-captain ‘held on for dear life’ in beatdown by boaters who’d caused ‘trouble’ before.

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The Alabama riverboat co-captain  attacked at the Montgomery Riverfront  said he “held on for dear life” while being battered by the unruly boaters — who had also caused them “trouble” in previous run-ins.

Damien Pickett said his crew asked the occupants of a pontoon boat “at least five or six times” to move from the docking spot dedicated to the Harriott II riverboat, according to a handwritten deposition  obtained by NBC News .

They responded by “giving us the finger” for several minutes, Pickett said.

After being ignored, Pickett and a dockhand then untied their boat and moved it “three steps to the right” and tied it again, he told authorities.

“By that time, two people ran up behind me,” he wrote, saying it included a man in a red hat who yelled, “Don’t touch that boat motherf–ker or we will beat your ass.”

“I told them, ‘No you won’t,’” he said, saying he told them when they kept threatening him: “Do what you’ve got to do. I’m just doing my job.”

Pickett said one of the men called another other and “They both were very drunk.”

While another man tried to “calm them down,” the boat’s owner arrived and “started getting loud.

“He got into my face. ‘This belongs to the f–king public.’ I told him this was a city dock,” Pickett recalled in his statement.

“By that time, a tall, older white guy came over and hit me in the face,” he said.

“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,” Pickett wrote. Someone then “tackled” him, he wrote. “I went to the ground. I think I hit one of them.

“I think I bit one of them, and I can hear them saying, ‘I’m going to kill you motherf–ker,'” he wrote.

“I can’t tell you how long it lasted. I grabbed someone and held on for dear life.”

After struggling to his feet, Pickett said he looked up and saw a colleague. “One of my co-workers had jumped in the water and was pushing people and fighting,” he wrote.

“The guy, the one who started it all was choking my sister,” he wrote, according to WSFA , which identified the suspect as Richard Roberts, 48.

“I hit him, grabbed her, and turned around, and [police] had a taser in my face. I told him I was attacked and said can I finish my job? Because the back of the boat wasn’t tied,” Pickett wrote.

When the situation was brought under control, he said he let off his passengers with the help of police. “I was apologizing to them for the inconvenience. Some of them gave me cards with their names and numbers,” he wrote.

Pickett said he was checked out at a hospital after the attack, where he found out that he had “no broken bones, just a few bruised ribs and a lump” on the head.

His fellow captain, Jim Kittrell, told Alabama’s 93.1 radio station that this wasn’t the first time he had trouble with the same boaters.

“This is the same group that comes every year … we’ve had trouble with them in the past, but just like jokey things,”  he told the station .

“Like, a couple of years ago, this same group was here. We came back from a cruise and our golf cart was missing. …we finally found it in the Hampton Inn lobby,” he said.

“We were going to press charges then, but the police talked us out of it.”

Kittrell previously said he believed the attack was “racially motivated,” but police say hate charges are not justified.

So far four people have been arrested for the attack, with police saying more are expected.

Roberts, Allen Todd, 23, and Zachary Shipman, 25, were charged Tuesday with assault, while a fourth suspect, Mary Todd, 21, was arrested Thursday after she turned herself into Montgomery police.

Police did not disclose what role she played in the brawl, but video shows a woman with features similar to Todd’s  hurling punches and shoving others  during the chaos.

It was unclear whether Mary Todd and Allen Todd are related.

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The riverfront brawl in Alabama reignites national debate over race

Dustin Jones

The Harriott II riverboat sits at the Riverfront dock in Montgomery, Ala. Three white men have been charged with assault for attacking the ship's co-captain last Saturday, which turned into a brawl along racial lines, as seen in dozens of videos online. Kim Chandler/AP hide caption

The Harriott II riverboat sits at the Riverfront dock in Montgomery, Ala. Three white men have been charged with assault for attacking the ship's co-captain last Saturday, which turned into a brawl along racial lines, as seen in dozens of videos online.

Warning: This story contains profanity and a racial slur.

Police in Montgomery, Ala., say that they have not found evidence that last weekend's riverfront brawl — in which a large number of people squared off against each along racial lines — rises to the level of a hate crime.

However, a week later, people who have seen videos of the fight, including experts, pundits and social media users, remain divided: Some are saying race had nothing to do with the incident, while others say the footage clearly shows how groups divided by race.

What's certain is that the incident has reignited conversations about race across the U.S.

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

What montgomery officials are saying.

Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday that the brawl doesn't meet the criteria for hate crime charges under federal law. He said that he also understands why people are raising the issue of race.

"That's why this department went above and beyond and looked under every stone for answers," Albert said, adding that the charges that were brought accurately reflect the evidence available at the time. Investigations are ongoing.

Steven L. Reed, Montgomery's first Black mayor , has promised to hold the people responsible for fight accountable. He says he has two different perspectives on the incident, one as a public servant and one as Black man.

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed (seen here on Aug. 8 speaking to the press with Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert in the background) says the people responsible for the fight will be held accountable. Julie Bennett/Getty Images hide caption

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed (seen here on Aug. 8 speaking to the press with Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert in the background) says the people responsible for the fight will be held accountable.

"At this point in the investigation, the FBI has not classified these attacks as a hate crime. As a former judge and as an elected official, I understand that and will trust this process and the integrity of our justice system," Reed said in a statement to NPR on Thursday.

"However, my perspective as a Black man in Montgomery differs from my perspective as mayor. 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, and this kind of violence cannot go unchecked."

He also says that as more information becomes available, his office will work with the U.S. Justice Department to "thoroughly vet whether new evidence reclassifies the incident as a hate crime per FBI protocol."

How the brawl unfolded

Dozens of videos of the incident last Saturday began surfacing earlier this week, including one from Alabama political reporter Josh Moon, who shared a video of the fight on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It shows that the incident at Montgomery's Riverfront Park appears to have started after a group of people docked their pontoon boat in a space reserved for the city's riverboat, the Harriott II.

A screenshot from one of the videos of the brawl in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday. The video shows a fight that broke out between a boat co-captain 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

A screenshot from one of the videos of the brawl in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday. The video shows a fight that broke out between a boat co-captain and several men who appeared to be parking their pontoon boat in a space reserved for the city's riverboat.

After 45 or so minutes of announcements over a loudspeaker asking for the pontoon boat to be moved, the Black co-captain of the Harriott II, named as Dameion Pickett in court documents, and a white 16-year-old deckhand, who NPR isn't naming because he's a minor, went ashore to move the craft so the riverboat could dock, said Albert, the police chief.

Pickett, 43, was confronted by several men from the pontoon boat, and heated conversation escalated to a fight. Video appears to show Richard Roberts, 48, striking Pickett first. Allen Todd and Zachery Shipman joined the fight, punching and kicking Pickett.

Another Harriott II crew member, Crystal Warren, witnessed the incident from aboard the riverboat. Her son is the 16-year-old deckhand, who was allegedly assaulted by people associated with the pontoon boat . She said in a sworn statement to police that she heard one of the men yell, "F*** that n*****" as Pickett was trying to move the vessel.

3 men are being charged with assault for the waterfront brawl in Montgomery

Warren also said that one of the men fighting Harriot II crew members was heard saying he was "getting his gun." She said a riverboat employee tackled the man as he appeared to try and get the weapon.

As of Friday, Roberts has been charged with two counts of 3rd degree assault, while Todd, 23 , and Shipman , 25, each face one count of 3rd degree assault. They are scheduled to be arraigned on these misdemeanor charges on Sept. 1. (A fourth person, Mary Todd, 21, has also been charged with one count of 3rd degree assault.)

NPR attempted to reach the defendants for comment, but those efforts were unsuccessful.

Why conversations about race are hard for officials

It's not surprising that authorities have been reluctant to discuss race, says Christina Ferraz , a public relations consultant who specializes in reaching communities of color.

Public officials can be risk-averse on the topic because of its general divisiveness in today's "culture wars," says Ferraz .

A dancer's killing — over voguing — highlights the dangers Black LGBTQ Americans face

"As this conflict may be identified as racially motivated, but not yet been charged as a hate crime, it can be considered slander and defamation of character for a public official to make a statement on the conflict without anyone being charged," Ferraz tells NPR. "Public officials can be sued and this can negatively impact their brand reputation with donors and constituents."

NPR reached out to the Montgomery Police Department for further comment, but did not receive a response.

One historian says the question of race is clear

Formal hate crime charges haven't been made, but observers like Derryn Moten , a professor of American history at Alabama State University, are blunt when describing Saturday's attack: "I completely reject the idea that race had no part or played no part in that incident."

To those who disagree, he says, "That's not what my eyes saw, that's not how my brain understood what I was looking at."

Moten, who also serves as chair of the university's Department of History and Political Science, says the fight took place in the area where enslaved people were brought in by boat on the Alabama River — and mere blocks from warehouses where they were held before being sold at auction.

Media outlets and pundits have been discussing these ties between Montgomery's racial history and the brawl. But Moten says what happened in Montgomery isn't exclusive to the South; it's a national problem.

The Titans' Terrell Williams temporarily will be the NFL's 4th Black head coach

"The incident that happened in Montgomery is not unique to Montgomery," he says. "I don't want, or would not want, anybody to think, 'Oh, these are the types of things that just happen in the South.' No. Sadly, they can happen anywhere in the United States."

He says that race is a factor in many of the issues that currently divide the country, including critical race theory, what some politicians and conservative activists refer to as "cancel culture" and "wokeness," police use of deadly force, and how American history is taught.

When Republicans Attack 'Cancel Culture,' What Does It Mean?

"The time period that we're experiencing socially and politically in our country is really interesting in that there seems to be an effort among some, for lack of a better word, to sanitize American history, particularly American history as it relates to enslavement, as it relates to immigration, as it relates to the forced migration of Native people," Moten says. "And all of this done in an effort to paint the United States as exceptional. And I think any honest person who reads American history would find it impossible to accept that notion."

Despite the painful racial fault lines of the U.S. today, Moten says he remains optimistic that things will get better with time, and that "good ultimately will triumph."

"I'm a student of history, so I have a lot of evidence to back that up," he says, citing the reunification of Germany, the end of apartheid in South Africa and, closer to home, the success of the Montgomery bus boycott .

"I think one of the difficult things for a lot of people to accept is that we have to work constantly at making sure that equal protection means equal protection for all. That equal rights means equal rights for all. And that we can't rest on our laurels."

Correction Aug. 12, 2023

An earlier photo caption incorrectly referred to a dock worker instead of a boat co-captain.

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Montgomery riverboat co-captain says he was hanging on ‘for dear life’ in brawl

Damien Pickett, who is Black, describes being attacked by white boaters after attempting to move their pontoon boat

An Alabama boat co-captain was hanging on “for dear life” as men punched and tackled him on the riverfront of the state’s capital city, he told police after video of the brawl circulated widely online.

Damein Pickett, a crew member of the Harriott II in Montgomery, described the brawl in a handwritten statement to authorities included in court documents, saying he was attacked after moving a pontoon boat a few feet so the city-owned riverboat could dock.

Four white boaters have been charged with misdemeanor assault in the attack against Pickett, who is Black, as well as a teen deckhand, who was punched and is white. The deckhand’s mother heard a racial slur before Pickett was hit, she wrote in a statement.

A fifth person, a Black man who appeared to be hitting people with a folding chair during the subsequent fight, has been charged with disorderly conduct, police announced on Friday.

Video of the melee sparked scores of memes and video re-enactments. But the footage also prompted commentary in some quarters about how the fight vividly illustrated the racial tension and divide across the US.

Pickett told police that the captain had asked a group on a pontoon boat “at least five or six times” to move from the riverboat’s designated docking space but they responded by “giving us the finger and packing up to leave”. Pickett and another deckhand eventually took a vessel to shore and moved the pontoon boat “three steps to the right”, he wrote.

He said two people ran rushing back, including one cursing and threatening to beat him for touching the boat. Pickett wrote that one of the men shouted that it was public dock space, but Pickett told them it was the city’s designated space for the riverboat. He said he told them he was “just doing my job”. Pickett said he was punched in the face and hit from behind.

“I went to the ground. I think I bit one of them. All I can hear Imma kill you” and beat you, he wrote. He couldn’t tell “how long it lasted” and “grabbed one of them and just held on for dear life”, Pickett wrote.

After the fight was over, Pickett said he apologized to the riverboat customers for the inconvenience as he helped them get off the boat.

The deckhand had gone with Pickett to move the pontoon boat. His mother, who was also on the Harriott, said in a statement to police that her son tried to pull the men off Pickett and was punched in the chest.

Darron Hendley, an attorney listed in court records for two of the people charged, declined to comment. It was not immediately clear if the others had an attorney to speak on their behalf.

The Montgomery mayor, Steven Reed, said on Friday that the investigation is ongoing.

Police said they consulted with the FBI and determined what happened on the riverfront did not qualify as a hate crime. Reed, the city’s first Black mayor, said he will trust the investigative process but said his “perspective as a Black man in Montgomery differs from my perspective as mayor”.

“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,” said Reed, referring in part to Montgomery’s being the site of a bus boycott which was a pivotal moment in the US civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

“It is a threat to the durability of our democracy, and we are grateful to our law enforcement professionals, partner organizations and the greater community for helping us ensure justice will prevail.”

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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.

• National News

Three men charged with assault in viral waterfront brawl in Alabama

Associated Press | AP

August 9th, 2023

Three white boaters in Alabama’s capital city 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 proven 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.

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 slaveowners 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.

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 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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Riverboat Co-Captain Charged in Viral Summer Alabama Riverfront Brawl

Dameion pickett faces charges of third-degree assault.

The co-captain of an Alabama riverboat has been charged in connection with the dockside brawl that drew national attention in August, according to a local media report.

Dameion Pickett , the co-captain of the Harriott II riverboat, was charged with third-degree assault, according to a report by CBS’ Selma affiliate WAKA . Pickett is the sixth person charged in the brawl, which was spurred after the riverboat attempted to dock along the Montgomery riverfront but was blocked by a private pontoon boat.

The charges were filed on Oct. 26 and were not publicly announced by the Montgomery police or Montgomery city attorney, according to AL.com .

Pickett, who is Black, took a smaller boat to the dock to move the pontoon boat on his own, but four white boaters attacked him, prompting others to defend Pickett and turning the initial disagreement into a melee. Some believed the incident was racially motivated .

Richard Roberts, 48; Zachery Shipman, 25; Allen Todd, 23; and Mary Todd, 21, were all charged with third-degree assault for allegedly attacking Pickett. Reggie Ray, 42, was also charged with disorderly conduct in the fight for allegedly hitting someone with a folding chair.

Shipman is listed as the complainant in the case against Pickett, according to WAKA.

Mary Todd reached a plea agreement with prosecutors last month, downgrading her charge to harassment. She will be required to pay $357 in court costs and complete anger management classes.

In addition, Roberts agreed to plead guilty to two counts of third-degree assault and received a suspended four-month jail sentence, which he will serve on the weekends, and 100 hours of community service.

Allen Todd, Shipman and Ray are all set to appear in court on Nov. 16. Pickett’s arraignment hearing is scheduled for Nov. 21, according to WAKA.

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

Kim Chandler

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)

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.

Photos You Should See

“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.

Copyright 2023 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Riverboat co-captain faces assault charge in Alabama brawl

The story of the Alabama riverboat dock brawl continues, as the co-captain has now been accused of assault.

A Black riverboat co-captain at the center of an Alabama riverfront brawl that drew national attention has been accused of misdemeanor assault in the melee by one of the White  boaters  charged in the fight.

Court records show one of the white men accused of assaulting the co-captain during the August brawl filed a complaint last month saying the co-captain hit him first during the chaotic melee. The co-captain faces a  charge  of misdemeanor assault, according to court records.

"I was not trying to fight," the man wrote in a statement. 

The complaint was filed Oct. 26 ahead of the man's Nov. 16 trial on a misdemeanor assault charge of hitting and kicking the riverboat co-captain.

Here's what really happened with the Alabama riverfront dock brawl

Alabama's Montgomery Police Department gave an update on the brawl that occurred on its riverside dock.

The  August riverfront melee  in Montgomery drew national attention after bystanders filmed White boaters hitting a Black riverboat co-captain and others rushing to his defense. Video of the fight was shared widely online, sparking countless memes and parodies.

Montgomery police said the brawl began when the White boaters refused to move their pontoon boat so the city-owned Harriott II riverboat could dock in its designated space. The boat's co-captain said he was attacked after moving the pontoon boat a few feet to make way for the  riverboat .

Five other people were previously charged in the brawl. Two white boaters previously pleaded guilty to charges of misdemeanor assault or harassment. Three other people, including a Black man who was filmed swinging a folding chair, have upcoming court dates.

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