A fight broke out between a Black road worker and a white Mississippi driver who allegedly didn’t want to follow directions.
Ashylee Neely said she witnessed a disturbing confrontation that prompted her to pull out her phone and hit record.
Her July 20 TikTok video shows the two men scuffling in the street in front of Christian Faith Missionary Baptist Church on the corner of Scales and Whitfield Streets in Starkville.
By the end of the clip, authorities had detained the driver.
The video itself doesn’t provide much detail, other than showing the road worker teaching the driver a hard lesson. He grabbed the driver by his shirt collar and swung him around the pavement, before pulling his shirt clear off. All the while, he never took off his work gear.
One commenter marveled, “How do you get beat up by someone with a backpack on? Kudos to the young man for defending himself!”
Neely provided important context in her lengthy caption, saying it all came down to an impatient driver who didn’t want to wait.
“A young Black man was out doing his job, directing traffic while road work was taking place. He was there to help keep both the workers and the public safe,” she began, adding that it would be a “minor inconvenience” for most people. “But what I witnessed was far more than frustration over traffic.”
She claimed the situation spun out of control when the driver stepped out of his vehicle, ready for a fight. According to Neely, the traffic control person was simply defending himself.
Commenters watching the melee couldn’t help but applaud the man for hardly skipping a beat after the fight. “Whopped a– and went right back to work,” wrote one person on Atlanta Black Star’s official Instagram. Another noted, “That’s some true work ethic.”
A third person chimed in, “We been fighting all our lives and getting back to business.”
But, as Neely pointed out in her caption, we shouldn’t ignore the bigger picture: a lack of common decency and respect.
“It costs nothing to be patient, follow instructions, and keep your hands to yourself,” she said. “A few minutes of waiting is never worth turning into a physical confrontation.”