“I think that any man has a legal right to save anybody from drowning.”
These words from Bob Goodwyn ran in the Montgomery Advertiser in 1908, a time when few former slaves were quoted. His acts of heroism on Montgomery’s stretch of the Alabama River were recognized by whites and inspired Black people long before the Civil Rights Movement.
That wasn’t always the case for Goodwyn. Before people called him a hero, many only saw him as an old, broken man. They knew Goodwyn as “Old Bob,” since he was likely in his late 50s or 60s. They also called him “One-armed Bob,” because years earlier his right arm had been ripped away and the skin flayed from his skull by gears at a gin shop.
He shouldn’t have survived the accident, at least not according to doctors at the time.
But Goodwyn found his way to a new path, working for Southern Railway official W.A. Henderson as a ferryman in Montgomery. Before the area’s major bridges existed, Goodwyn was tasked with bringing people and vehicles safely across the Alabama River.