The 100-year-old newspaper articles cited as evidence for the veracity of this claim were more likely cashing in on racist stereotypes than observing journalistic due diligence.
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.at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, which does, in fact, house artifacts demonstrating how pervasive derogatory imagery of black people was in American popular culture right up through the mid-20th century.
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 .
In our attempt to verify the report, we found no such reference to the use of"pickaninnies" to bait alligators in the place where one would most expect it to turn up, theone that was published on the same date , describing the transfer of the same number of alligators from their winter to their summer housing in New York's Bronx Zoological Garden.
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.
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