Black Gator Baby

        I recently stumbled on a picture of a Black baby in an alligators mouth.  I found this picture very distrubing, and decided to research the origin of it.  I wanted to know was this real!  It isn't really a question of whether African American babies were used as alligator bait, but the question is how frequent was the practice?

        During slavery and the Jim Crow era in the United States, African Americans were brutalized and mistreated in almost every way imaginable. If there was a way to kill, maim, oppress, or use an African American for any reason, it more than likely happened, using the for leather shoes or handbags.  African American babies being used as alligator bait really happened, and it happened to real people.  

        It is hard to process the thinking that could lead a person to actually use a live human baby as bait for an alligator. That is why the objects in the Jim Crow Museum are so important - they help tell the story of a society that defined African Americans as "sub-human" by portraying them as savage and worthless creatures ("Americans Forced", 1944). If people are indoctrinated, over and over again, with items, images, objects, and practices that devalue the humanity of African Americans, then practices like "African Dodger", "Human Zoos" and "Alligator bait" become possible.

        In 1908 the Washington Times reported that a keeper at the New York Zoological Garden baited "Alligators With Pickaninnies" out of their winter quarters. In the article two "small colored children happened to drift through the reptile house among the throng 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" ("Baits Alligators").

        The headline in the September 21, 1923 Oakland Tribune reads "PICKANINNY BAIT LURES VORACIOUS 'GATOR TO DEATH. And Mother Gets Her Baby Back in Perfect Condition; Also $2". In the article T.W. Villiers chronicles the entire process of using black babies as bait and how "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." Villiers is quick to point out that the babies are brought out of the "water alive and whole and come out wet and laughing" and that "there is nothing terrible about it, except that it is spelling death for the alligators." In a strange twist, Villiers reports on the hunter's attempts to rationalize the motivation of the alligators to "jeopardize every hope of life for a live baby, and in the matter of color, the additional information is vouchsafed that black babies, in the estimation of the alligators, are far more refreshing, as it were, than white ones."

        The article describes the process of placing the babies near the alligator's haunts, with the hunters hidden behind the brush with their rifles. When the baby "attracts" the gator and it exposes his "head and forequarters", the hunters shoot the gator and claim their "prize." And, just in case someone happens to care about the welfare of the baby, the reader is assured that "Florida alligator hunters do not ever miss their targets." After the baby is returned to its mother, she is paid the set price of two dollars (Villiers, 1923).