Why #MontgomeryRiverfrontBrawl gained new meaning in Black conversations

It’s summertime, but, contrary to George Gershwin’s classic tune from “Porgy and Bess,” the livin’ was not easy at the event memorialized in a social media hashtag as simply #MontgomeryRiverfrontBrawl.

- Clarence Page

Brawl, indeed. The melee is a mess to sort out, but I guess that alcohol was involved.

What else explains the rapid and ridiculous escalation of an argument over moving a boat on a sunny Alabama summer day into an all-out, racially-tinged melee with multiple arrests?

Yet, in the age of social media, the melee in Montgomery quickly went viral on the web, literally inviting anyone to add their own soundtrack and commentary — and many people did.

In case you somehow managed to miss it, the man who received the first blow was Damien Pickett, co-captain of the city-owned Harriott II, a riverboat carrying about 200 passengers that couldn’t park in its proper dock because a smaller pontoon boat was parked in its designated space.

Pickett spent 45 minutes on his boat’s PA system ordering the smaller boat to move. But the people in the docked boat, who happened to be white, ignored Pickett, who happened to be Black.