Perhaps you’ve seen the memes? Maybe the lone chair without context? Maybe you’ve just seen it in passing? If you haven’t seen the famous Alabama brawl taking over social media, stop what you’re doing and give it a watch. Of course, there are so many variations of this it could make your head spin, but one in particular really caught our attention.
For context, here’s some background. A group of white men attacked a Black dock worker after he asked them to move their pontoon boot so a riverboat could dock. At one point, more than five white people attack the worker at once.
Then a group of Black men, some of them riverboat crew members alongside the worker who was attacked, approach the pontoon boat faction and fighting breaks out even more! Then police officers show up, and at one point, a guy hits someone with a chair. There’s even a guy, reportedly another riverboat crew member, who swims over to help it’s really wild.
There are a lot of videos of this. Like this one. Or this one with Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” overlayed on top of it. There’s been a lot of variations of this one too (buying a chair in Walmart).
One parody in particular has gone pretty viral, stacking up more than 1.2 million likes. TikTok user kendria_bland made a video where the “Avengers,” well, a different version of the Avengers, with names like Hulkeon and Thor-ontae, take on the white people.
Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman are there as well. It’s spectacular and perfect in tone. Sometimes things just line up.
Until next time!