Raise a chair if you remember: Three years later, Black communities are still celebrating the viral Montgomery brawl

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3 years later, Black communities are still celebrating the Montgomery Brawl

From the swinging folding chair to the hundreds of memes that followed, the viral 2023 Alabama Riverfront fight is cemented in Black history.

Whether you call it the Montgomery brawl, the Montgomery Riverfront Uprising, the Alabama Sweet Tea Party, or the Alabama beatdown, Black communities across the U.S. remember the events of August 5, 2023, and its virality. 

If you somehow managed to miss it, the brawl that took the internet by storm and became the source of memes and merch stemmed from a dispute about a parking space along the dock at Alabama’s Riverfront Park when a group of white revelers attacked a Black dock employee who asked them to move their illegally parked boat. And ultimately, things didn’t turn out quite as the boaters expected, as Black onlookers rushed to the man’s defense. And thanks to one on-looker who was trained on Worldstar HipHop level iPhone filming, the entire moment was captured on video and cemented into the archive of Black cultural moments. 

So much so that Black communities have deemed it a holiday. 

In addition to the jokes and memes that followed, the incident ended well for the Black people involved, as the white boaters pleaded guilty to harassment, and a Montgomery judge dismissed the assault charges the Black co-captain faced. The case of the Montgomery Brawl created a sense of unity among Black communities on social media due to the catharsis it provided. While most of us are taught that violence should be a last resort, there was something ancestral about watching a group of Black people come to one man’s defense and shut down the entitlement that is often ignored within certain communities (iykyk).

So, as we lift every chair and swing and remember the hat signal that was seen across the riverfront, Happy Chairteenth and Brawl-aversary to all of those who celebrate. 

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