The Greatest Civil Rights Action of a Generation

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“To be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all of the time.” —James Baldwin

There are few examples in the history of the United States, where Black rage does not result in an overwhelmingly violent response from white power structures and individuals. There are even fewer moments where the collective majority of white folks openly admit that some of their kin did a racism and deserved comeuppance.

But on August 5, 2023, a most rare and wonderful moment in USian history occurred.

At approximately 7PM a fight broke out when the Black co-captain of a river boat cruse ship attempted to get a party of white pontoon boaters to move their illegally parked boat that was preventing the the 227 passengers of the river ship from disembarking and going about the rest of their day.

Damien Pickett, the co-captain, went ashore and was confronted by some of the pontoon boat owners who argued, cursed, and allegedly said, “fuck that nigger!” Soon after, one particularly emboldened pontoon Chad ran at Captain Pickett and punched him in the face.

What happened next was both legendary and familiar to many a Black person when the racism becomes too much and we say to ourselves, “well fuck it. I guess I’m going to have to fight these crackers.”

Pickett throws off his hat, squares up, and prepares to fight some crackers. He’s then jumped by a half dozen white men from the pontoon and taken to the ground with kicks and punches.

But this story doesn’t end how so many like this begin. The crackers don’t prevail this time, because witnessing Captain Pickett’s bravery in the face of the insanity that is racism pushes seemingly every Black bystander in the marina past “fuck it” and let me tell you good people, those racist motherfuckers catch all the smoke, hands, and folding chairs one could ever wish for in what can only be described as one of the most beautiful moments of Black solidarity and racial justice of the 21st century.

It. Was. Beautiful!

Black social media exploded with memes, reels, and Tik Toks that left my sides hurting and my eyes soaked with the unshed tears of joy of the ancestors. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl is one of my favorite moments in USian history.

Black rage and the wild kitchen

So what does this moment have to do with a newsletter about building the wild kitchen? Well, the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl (MRB) was first and foremost about contested spaces and who was presumed to belong and control that space.

One of the most common comments I’ve gotten in my race and hunting series is deep skepticism and derision about the concept of so-called “white spaces”. Nevermind that this idea is extensively written about, theorized, and obvious in cases like MRB; still folks struggle with the concept that space is racialized.

As is often the case, folks who struggle with the concept of racialized spaces feel their sense of the world and themselves is under attack by a concept that would force them to reshape their outlook if accepted. Few people deny that racism ever existed in the U.S., but many more would rather go through life believing that racism was vanquished at some point in the past.

“The boogeyman that is racism was defeated and anyone who claims otherwise is making shit up.”

But the white pontoon boat party members do not verbally and physically assault a Black captain of a ship when clearly in the wrong without knowing that white power structures will come to their defense if need be. You don’t pick a fight at a party you’re crashing unless you know you have backup that tips the scales in your favor. But what could that trump card be…

Whiteness.

Those white people stepped into the well established role that this country’s history has socialized them to believe about themselves since 1619. If you’re white, there is nothing you cannot demand and nothing you do not deserve from a Black person if you so desire it. If the law isn’t on your side then the law will changed to full fill what white god has ordained. So go ahead and put any and all Black folks in their place should they dare step out of line.

This is a USian white person’s birthright, and it is available to every white person in this country at all times.

Every relatively conscious Black adult person I know is keenly aware of the time bomb of racism that is any given white USian we encounter. And every single adult Black person I know has, at least once, but often many times, born witness to a white person embodying their birthright in the face of a Black person that needs to be reminded of how things work here.

It’s like every single white person in the U.S. can be taken over by racism like these people in the Matrix are taken over by agents (Seriously, The Matrix is the greatest movie of all time because it explains so much in USian society).

So when we understand that 98% of all rural land in the U.S. is owned by white people and that Black folks own fewer acres of land today than post-Emancipation and that the Great Migration was fueled by waves of unspeakable white violence meant to disempower Black people from controlling space and that strict policies of spatial segregation kept Black people in urban areas in the north, then we can understand why Black folks might be nervous about asserting our presence in spaces that are explicitly controlled and implicitly understood to be white spaces. 

Caution is not the same as being shook.

Denial of reality does not mean you are strong in the face of it.

Another common comment from people on the race and hunting series is a combo of:

“Well, if you’re scared to go out there and hunt, then just stay home!”

“Stop letting your own internalized racism keep you from getting out there and hunting.”

First of all, most of these folks (I assume 99.9% of them are white) would have a mental breakdown if they had to function in society under the pressure of doing so while Black. Y’all see those videos of men hooked up to electrodes to simulate birth contractions? Yeah, that’s how these fools look to me telling me I’m the weak and scared one who can’t handle discomfort.

Recognizing and adhering to your boundaries of safety and sanity is not weakness. It’s the exact opposite. Not putting yourself in danger isn’t foolishness, it’s prudence. Speaking about how race functions in the world isn’t racism, it’s necessary for change.

One of the things Janis Putelis, one of the founding members of MeatEater, said to me during our phone conversation about my article Hunting While Black was that he was a “history buff”. Steven Rinella, the head of MeatEater, routinely talks and writes about USian [American] history of the outdoors. Neither of them has anything more than a whisper of content that talks explicitly about how racism shaped these now “great public spaces”, yet none of the story of how the US came to be makes sense without how white supremacy was formed and weaponized.

Such an ahistorical practice is another insidious part of the birthright of a white USian and each time they take up the practice of erasing race from history, the people and the communities they interact with are worse off.

Forget baseball, the abandonment and refusal to deal with the harsh realities we’ve all been burden with in this country is the great [USian] past time. But we all know this unpleasant hasn’t really gone anywhere, even if we consciously try to convince ourselves and others that “getting over it” is best and only way to cope.

It’s a wonder more Montgomery Riverfront Brawls don’t happen in the US given the levels of cognitive dissonance white folks display by both denying racism exists while resorting to racism to try and settle conflict with a Black person that isn’t going their way.

Black people, in general, live with this reality far more consciously than white folks in my experience. Moments like the MRB are more legible and, I would argue, more accurately theorized by Black folks because we are forced to live with the consciousness that our race always matters to those with power.

To me and so many other Black folks and Black hunters, the explanation of what was likely to have precipitated Peter Spencer’s murder is the easy part. We see a Black man in an unfamiliar rural area with (mostly) unfamiliar white folks who ends up dead with multiple gunshot wounds and our heads almost involuntarily shake with knowing disappointment for how things turned out for the victim and how the white folks involved almost certainly won’t be held to any kind of account.

We don’t know that Peter Spencer was lynched, but thanks to the people who killed him and a district attorneys office that had to be cajoled into investigating this case, we probably won’t ever know. Giving the killers the benefit of the doubt might be the Christian thing to do, but why, given the history of Black Death at the hands of white people in the US would someone refuse to be skeptical of the account of the survivors?

Whiteness. That’s why.

I created Part 3 of the Race and Hunting series, in part, to help those who struggled to see that what helps me make sense of the world is an entire ecosystem of scholarship and historical accounts our society specially attempts to keep us from knowing and learning from.

Racism structures all space

Contrary to popular socialization, the United States of America was not founded on the principle of freedom and justice for all; it was founded on the principle that rich white men should get to do whatever they want so long as they are willing to enact any manner of violence to those who oppose them.

That principle still holds today, though the means of said violence continues to evolve and is further rationalized under the common argument: “well, we can’t easily stop this train now, so we might as well keep going”.

The Montgomery Riverfront Brawl is a reminder to us all that we really haven’t resolved the fundamental protest against America, and that our national practice of denial and can kicking will require increasing levels of physical violence to shake our collective consciousness out of.

I celebrate that great cathartic moment in USian history that was the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl as a release valve for the rage so many Black people live with every day. On that day and every year after, we have an opportunity to confront our socialize forgetting of the centrality of race and embrace the spirit of accountability that can only come from a gang of shirtless Black men running up on you cuz you’ve far exceeded your racism limit.

The Wild Kitchen, my vision for my life’s work, is a racialized space because all spaces are racialized in this country. Wild food work cannot be done effectively or intelligently without a deep awareness of this fundamental reality. MeatEater and others like them cannot run fast enough from the discomfort of facing their country’s whole self, but that’s okay because there are others willing to do that work.

You can sit in the chair, be in conversation with those willing to deal with America as it is, or…

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Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan