When a Black riverboat captain was assaulted by a group of disrespectful white pontoon cruisers, the Saturday evening confrontation at Montgomery, Alabama’s Riverfront Park set off a melee that would rival any heavyweight prize fight for global attention.
It started after the captain had spent 45 minutes asking the cruisers to move the pontoon they had docked in the riverboat’s parking space, a request that was met with swearing and obscene gestures. When one cruiser lunged at the captain with both hands and knocked him back, the skipper dug in for a fight. Seeing him outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed, Black onlookers swarmed to his defense, kicking off an epic brawl that was caught on camera from multiple angles.
It was only a matter of time before Black Twitter was jumping into the fray and sizing up every story detail in the fight scene for comedic potential – from a dockworker’s Mary Tyler Moore-esque hat toss to a Black teen attempting a Baywatch-style water rescue to a Black man wielding a folding chair.
The no-punchlines-pulled feeding frenzy doesn’t just represent a new high water mark for internet comedy. It cut to the heart of the many cultural currents that converged on the Alabama shore that fateful evening: Montgomery’s racist history, its civil rights redemption, the onslaught of viral videos depicting unarmed Black people in death throes, and the catharsis that can come from collective resistance.
Y’all I’m Dead Af Why We So Unserious 🤣😭😂 #Montgomery #Alabama #brawl #fight #funny #MontgomeryAlabama pic.twitter.com/QskI0kqqAn
— X Kalijah Kane (@xKalijahKan3) August 7, 2023
The jokes, which haven’t slowed in the five days since the incident (with three people in custody), have run the gamut. Within hours, there was a commemorative T-shirt and then, days later, earrings. A beat-for-beat re-enactment –had a random collection of pool-goers replaying the entire scene in slow motion.
A trap anthem titled Montgomery Brawl heaped praise on the Black pleasure seekers who stood up for the boat captain. “Alright, bet, lemme tell y’all what really happened,” goes one lyric channeling the voice of a stranded riverboat cruiser, “heard they was jumpin’ on my cousin; lemme off, captain.” This was after pleasure seekers aboard the riverboat could be heard chanting the hook from the hit Ludacris song Move Bitch.
The fracas itself has taken on many titles: the Riverboat Rumble, the Montgomery Melee, the Alabama Sweet Tea Party. The one that appears to have stuck, Fade in the Water, is a fighting spin on old Negro spiritual. Its unquestioned hero remains the 16-year-old who cut through the Alabama River to come to the captain’s aid and defied the stereotype that Black people can’t swim in the same bold stroke. Even though his name has only just become public, many online have already come to know him as “Scuba Gooding Jr” or “Childish Branzino” or “Black Aquaman” – a dominant weekend trending topic.
The fact that Black keyboard comics have kept the story alive online for so long is especially impressive considering how many of them deserted Twitter for other platforms after Elon Musk took control.
The story, best told through memes, is particularly well suited to more visual platforms like TikTok and Spill, a Black Twitter refuge. One Photoshop job, used as cover art for the boat brawl anthem, reimagines the dockside incident as a scene from Marvel’s Doctor Strange, with two white guys backing down from a Black pack emerging from another dimension through fiery rings.
The mashups that don’t lean into pop culture either nod at Montgomery’s civil rights connection to Martin Luther King Jr (a Black man in the role of overseer to three shirtless white cotton pickers as the reverend doctor smiles down from on high), or single out the dockside scene’s breakout star – the folding chair – for special recognition (another Black man with a folding chair clipped to his side under the caption “it’s an open carry state”). Just when you think the two ideas couldn’t possibly be conflated, into the timeline pops a meme of King in his Mountain of Despair DC monument holding a folding chair to keep the gag running.
Wow. pic.twitter.com/iORVE6emiN
— Eric Deggans at NPR (@Deggans) August 8, 2023
In many ways, the staggering commitment to this bit was born from an obligation to honor the moment’s overflowing symbolic themes. Before the city of Montgomery became the center of King’s bus boycotts, it was the seat of power for George Wallace – the polemical governor who fought to uphold Jim Crow and didn’t back down from federal challenges. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice pays tribute to the 4,400 people of color known to have been victims of racial terror in the United States; its place, across four downtown acres in the capital of a state responsible for at least 340 such killings, is no coincidence.
Downtown Montgomery was a critical hub for the slave trade, displacing Africans from the south-east coast into the deep south by the thousands through the park plaza where the ship captain was attempting to port. That his cavalry came from a vessel called Harriott II, which had the Black Twitter hive mind going straight to the Underground Railroad’s gun-toting hero conductor, wasn’t lost amid the laughter either. “If you understand the history of Montgomery,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, “it gives so much more perspective to this video.”
Even the folding chair, which might draw easy references to WWE’s SummerSlam, has roots in Black history. Its inventor – a Black man from Lynchburg, Virginia, named Nathaniel Alexander – meant for his contraption to be used in churches and schools. Shirley Chisholm, the pioneering congresswoman and presidential candidate, was famous for saying: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” It wasn’t long before that quote was captioning more boat brawl memes.
Of course there will be those inclined to castigate Black Twitter for delighting in what is a smorgasbord of misdemeanor assaults, as if January 6 rioters aren’t toasting their coup attempt as an actual Boston Tea Party sequel. The Fade in the Water jokes are born from a justifiable spirit of resistance – not a rejection of King’s non-violent teaching, but of the way that philosophy has been appropriated by white people for their own ends.
After they faced decades as helpless witnesses to broad daylight assaults, here was a moment when Black people banded together at every stage – capturing multiple camera angles, keeping the story trending outside of Twitter, hitting back with one devastating meme after another. The jokes go a long way in explaining how this rare stand-your-ground moment is cause for celebration, and why Black Twitter is destined to remain the reigning comedy emcee no matter where it plays.
• This article was amended on 13 August 2023. The name of the boat was Harriott II, not Harriett II as an earlier version said.
