I'm seeing on Facebook that the president of UF says, while he does not believe the chant was ever meant in any kind of racist way, he has found evidence that long ago white people would steal black babies and use them to bait alligators. sometimes the baby survived, a lot of times they didn't, no one with any power cared, and no one suffered any consequences. A friend on Facebook showed a video of a guy who has collected all sorts of little pieces of artwork depicting black babies next to alligators with the words "gator bait".
I think the art is real, but it was intended as a joke. Much like when I was in high school my friends and I used to like to tell jokes about dead babies. "What's worse than a dead baby?" "I don't know." "A pile of dead babies." etc.
I mean, no one should forget that slaves were basically treated as livestock. It makes sense to use livestock as gator bait. But there are so many other living things that make more sense to use this way, that are a lot easier and cheaper to get. Cats. Pigs. Chickens. I have a lot of trouble believing that the Gator bait story is literally true.

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