Using Black Babies as Bait
In the Bayou region and Southern states, small Black children would be stolen from their mothers and left in alligator territories to be used as bait. The crying Black infants would be used to attract alligators for hunting purposes.
According to a video called Lest We Forget by the Black Holocaust Museum of Slavery, one man’s account of his conversation with a clerk at a Florida pawn shop said, “the slaves who had babies, they would steal the babies during the course of 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 and 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 around 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, as a matter of fact, once he clamped on them he was really swallowed, he said you couldn’t see anything but the rope!”
