Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Not today.
Not today, white people.
Not today, or any day.
Not in Montgomery, Ala. Not anywhere. Not anymore.
Most reasonable people can agree that what was perpetrated last week on a dock in Alabama’s capital city was unconscionable. Criminal, more than likely.
A Black man, as we’ve seen on copious videos, working at the docks, was attacked by several white people after appearing to try to get the occupants of a private pontoon boat to move from a space reserved for The Harriott II, a riverboat that was trying to dock from an all-day cruise.
Witnesses attest the attackers emerged from aboard the pontoon boat.
Videos show at least four shirtless white men attacking the worker. Two white women later joined them. The Black man was tackled onto the wooden dock, pummeled by some, kicked by at least one.
What happened next was emphatic and undeniable: Not today.
Several Black men quickly disembarked the riverboat and came to the defense of the brother.
Not today.
They fought.
Not today.
They protected.
Not today.
They stood their ground.
Not today.
One young brother, a 16-year-old later identified only by his first name — Aeren, as per a release from the family’s publicist — made Al Campanis (Google his name and “buoyancy”) turn over in his grave by swimming to the dock from a nearby vessel, pulling himself out of the water and joining the chaotic melee in defense of the Black worker.
Not today.
As we inhaled, marveled and, yes, cheered the protective Black wall in the ubiquitous videos that filled our social media timelines, DMs and mailboxes, many of us, many African Americans, we were those Black men (well, not the brother wielding the chair) who came to the aid of one of our own.
We were on that dock.
Not today, white folks.
We were on that dock not just rallying to the defense of a brother under attack — but to the defense of all of us. All of us under attack.
Not today, Ron Desantis and his ignorant minions. You may try to diminish and deny our history with your state’s weak-kneed new curriculum “standards” aimed not at teaching the truth but fretting over whether that truth makes white kids “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress — something nary a white soul was concerned about when I learned of this nation’s myriad atrocities.
Not today.
You may have the unmitigated audacity to not just believe — but say out loud and require educators to teach the lie that slavery was somehow good for our ancestors. That “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” Florida’s curriculum vows to teach middle-schoolers. While not teaching them Africans possessed myriad skills before they were captured, chained, and claimed.
Not today.
“He’s not going to rewrite and redefine Black history,” swore Rev. R.B. Holmes Jr., pastor of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Fla. “Not while we’re still alive.”
Not today.
Not today, U.S. Supreme Court, as you brazenly seek to whiten already predominantly white Institutions by stripping race as an admissions factor while privilege (aka legacy) remains a powerful box in the process.
Not today, Mississippi “goon squad” cops, the six who pleaded guilty to 16 varied felonies last week in federal court in connection with torturing two Black men for 90 minutes at a home in Braxton, which they breached without showing a warrant, the U.S. Justice Department charged. One of the officers put a gun into the mouth of one of the men and fired, almost killing him. The men were also punched, kicked and waterboarded.
Not today, Alabama Republican lawmakers, who are all but daring the U.S. Supreme Court to tell them again that their gerrymandered U.S. congressional district lines doused Black voting power.
Not today.
The attacking whites on that dock Saturday night were thwarted by all of us.
By our anger. By our frustration. By our resolve.
By our commitment to defend ourselves. In Montgomery. Anywhere.
Today. And tomorrow.
Roy Johnson is a columnist for al.com.
