On Sunday night, Keke Palmer hosted the BET 2023 Soul Train Awards, an annual award show highlighting the biggest names in Soul and R&B.

Palmer hosted the award ceremony at her home. During the show’s opening segment, as she greeted her guests, she said she had a few house rules, including treating her furniture like it’s your own. “Each chair was specifically flown in from Montgomery!” she said, referencing the Montgomery riverfront brawl that made national headlines during the summer. “Remember how they was hitting them people? They was throwing them chairs!”

The joke stemmed from the Aug. 5 brawl when large groups of white and Black people fought on a riverboat dock in the state’s capital. The incident caused a national conversation about racism and the differences in how white and Black people react in moments of confrontation.

The fight broke out when group of people from a pontoon boat refused to move their boat while the Harriott II riverboat, a tourist attraction in Montgomery, was trying to dock in its designated spot. Videos from the brawl showed a Black riverboat co-captain being attacked by a group of white people as other Black people rushed to his defense.

Dameion Pickett, co-captain of a passenger riverboat who was beaten on the dock in Montgomery in August, recently pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assault in the incident. Municipal Judge Angela Starr scheduled Pickett’s trial for Jan. 30, after the trials of two men who are charged with assaulting Pickett in the Aug. 5 riverfront brawl. Zachery Shipman and Allen Todd are scheduled for trial Dec. 8 in Montgomery Municipal Court. Both are also charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor. Read more about the legal fallout from the brawl.

Palmer isn’t the only notable performer to reference the brawl on national television this fall. Birmingham-raised standup comic and actor Roy Wood Jr. appeared dressed as a folding chair during a Halloween season episode of the ABC talk show “The View.”

“What’s wrong?” Wood said, as the studio audience and “View” co-hosts erupted into laughter. “Black history right here; that’s all I’m doing. Well, as you know, the modern folding chair (was) invented by a Black inventor, Nathaniel Alexander, and a chair similar to this one was used earlier this year in Montgomery, Alabama, was used in, uh, we’ll just call it some peacekeeping efforts down on the water. That brother is currently awaiting trial.

“We do not condone violence; I don’t condone violence,” Wood said. “But I’m just saying this chair is a symbol of, you know, why we need to … If they ain’t gonna put CRT in the schools, we’re gonna put CRT at the boat docks. That’s what that brother was doing down in Montgomery, he was just, you know, educating.”

Palmer has recently been in the headlines for filing a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend and father of her sole 8-month old child. Not long after filing the protection order, Palmer was announced to be the host of the BET Soul Train Awards. The annual televised awards have taken place since 1987 with previous hosts like Luther Vandross, Patti LaBelle, and Queen Latifah.