In 418 B.C, Herodotus, the Greek philosopher known as the father of history, said: “a man who does not know anything about the events that took place before he or she was born will remain a child forever.”
We must go a step further by saying that “any human being who refuses to learn from his or her history is condemned to repeating its mistakes and as such will share the same fate in the consequences of such mistakes.”
Africa is a continent rich in history. As we enjoy telling stories of our golden past, it is essential that we also give a complete and undiluted account of our journey through slavery and man’s inhumanity to man.
Of all the atrocities committed against the enslaved Africans in the Americas and Europe, using babies as alligator bait leaves anyone with a conscience with a tear in the eye. Imagining the child in question was yours would send shivers down your spine.
These things are not easy to say, but we must answer them for posterity. And for the present and future.
Alligator bait, also called gator bait, was the evil practice of using African infant children as bait to lure alligators out from water to land. This practise was widespread in Louisiana, Florida, and other South America.
During that era, there was a high demand for alligator skin, which was used in producing leather shoes, jackets, belts, and other leather materials. Alligator skin was very profitable in the 1800s-1900s. But the hunters often had accidents and lost their arms or lives as they rustled the swampy waters to attract the alligators to the surface at night.
So, their other viable option was to steal slave babies and use them as bait. They found no rodents, chickens, rabbits, or little goats. Those were too valuable. It had to be a baby that a woman carried for nine months under intense pain, brutality, and hard work.
This account has been denied by many in their attempt to cover up this atrocity. But there are oral accounts, documentaries, and publications to substantiate our right to closure, empathy and healing.
To further prove this vile practice, photos and postcards found in the Jim Crow museum shed a bright light on this. A man in Florida had a picture framed and put on his wall showing nine naked little African boys with the words “Alligator Bait” written below.
To further bolster this account, on June 3, 1908, the ‘Washington Times’ reported that a zookeeper at the New York Zoological Gardens baited “Alligators with pickaninnies” out of their winter quarters. He sent two African slave children into an enclosure housing alligators and crocodiles, numbering more than 25.
The reptiles had to be led out of their winter tanks into summer tanks so people could see them. They didn’t find any other way to do this other than placing these children in the tank to lure the alligators and crocodiles out. How artistic!!!
The article read, “Two small coloured children happened to drift through the reptile house among the crowd of visitors”, and they were “pressed into service. The alligators “wobbled out as quick as they could after the ebony mites, who darted around the tank just as the pursuing monsters fell with grunts of chagrin into the water. The alligators were “coaxed” into their summer quarters by “plump little Africans.
Some sources claimed that the mothers were paid $2 (Two Dollars) for their babies to be used as bait. They also claimed that the babies were not hurt. But those were just false accounts to hide the heinous crimes. Which sane mother would allow her infant to be tied with a rope around the neck and kept by the river or lake banks as bait? No mother would do that. And at the time, enslaved Africans could not read or write, so how did they read the adverts and apply, as some sources have claimed?
Such lies could be found in the September 21, 1923, headline of the ‘Oakland Tribune, which read: “PICKANINNY BAIT LURES VORACIOUS ‘GATOR TO DEATH., And Mother Gets Her Baby Back in Perfect Condition; Also $2”.
It is very insensitive for a person to risk a baby’s life in such a manner and then justify it with charming words. In an article by T.W Villiers Chronicles, the gator bait process was described thus: “these little black morsels are more than glad to be led to the ‘sacrifice’ and do their part in lurking the big Florida gators to their fate without suffering so much as a scratch.”
But on the contrary, oral accounts of this practice report that most times, the babies are eaten by the alligator before the hunters shoot at it. The hunters sometimes aim to kill the alligator only after the baby is in its jaws. Evidence of this is found in the postcards, pictures, and trinkets they made at the time to commemorate the practice.
Other articles claim that the African slave infants were not only regularly used as alligator bait but violently skinned alive in preparation for this. We believe the smell of the blood and wounded flesh was meant to attract the alligators.
There was an account by the grandson of a man who used to engage in this business of gator baiting, and this is what he had to say: “The enslaved people who had babies, they would steal the babies during the day, sometimes when their mothers weren’t watching… Some would be infants; some would be a year old; he said some would be toddlers. He said they would grab these children, take them down to the swamp, and leave them in pens like little chicken coops.
They would go down there at night, take these babies and… tie them up, put a rope around their neck and their torso, around here, and tie it tight.
They’d be screaming… What they were doing would help them to chum the water. He said when they would throw the babies in tied to this rope, he said in a matter of minutes, he said, the alligators were on them. He said the alligator would clamp his jaws on that child. Once he tied on them, he was swallowed. He said you couldn’t see anything but the rope! Some would be infants; some would be a year old, toddlers, some would be infants.”
A 2014 article in the Miami New Times agreed that these claims are supported by sound research:
It has been pretty well documented recently that, during slavery and into the 20th Century, black babies were used as alligator bait in North and Central Florida.
‘Mammy’s Little Alligator Bait’
Shelved in the museum alongside the many stereotypical representations of “pickaninnies” (a racial slur applied to African-American youngsters) speaking fractured English, eating watermelon, catching opossums, etc., are similar cartoonish portrayals of black children (and sometimes black adults) as worthless “alligator bait.” In a chapter by that name in her 2002 book Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture, UCLA folklorist and African American studies professor Patricia Turner wrote that such artefacts “depict more than just the presence of a negative stereotype; they implicitly represent a form of aggression in eradicating an unwanted people.”
Most of these ugly images (evidently regarded as humorous in their day) are variations of the scenes depicted in the vintage postcards below (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons):
