Awesome Every Day

adailyriot:

badlandspolaroid:

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deejaybird:

Did you know in Florida during slavery slave masters would take a enslaved black child tie a rope around his or her legs put them in the water and use them for ALLIGATOR BAIT. Two movies in 1900 “Alligator Bait” and “Gator and the Pickaninny.” both showed and proved this practice.There were many advertisements and postcards in the South that proved this was real. A PART OF HISTORY NEVER TOLD. NOW YOU KNOW.

holy fuck . :(

I’m so going to lose followers for this but I want academic sources* backing this claim up. Media depictions of slaves being used as bait doesn’t prove that any slave children were used as bait… The fact these are from the 20th century should tell you something… this is imagery used to scare people. It is saying “you step out of line and you are alligator bait.”

*Peer reviewed books or journal articles. A blog, wikipedia, google search, etc. does not count as academic source. Yes, I’m one of those intellectual elitist folks who trust people with PhDs more than a person who can set up a blog on blogspot.

A friend of mine who teaches history at a large research university saw this post and had this to say:

Change your tumblr name. If you were a real historian, you would know how to find academic sources that might explain these images instead of pitching a flame bait hissy fit that someone hasn’t delivered peer reviewed journal articles to your doorstep. If you cannot contextualize and discuss primary source documents in a constructive manner, you are not one of the “intellectual elitist folks,” you’re just another undergrad who wants a cookie for staying awake in class.

I have this to say:

It sounds to me that because this doesn’t fit neatly into what you want to consider as actual american history, you need to get on the ball. This is about more than journals and sources. This is clearly about race, and your comfort level.

There are far too few American Black History PHD’s walking the earth to begin with, but you shouldn’t disrespect those who exist by disregarding what people have learned factual information like this (go look it up) from these researchers. Also, sometimes, in the black community, finding factual records of things like this are difficult to discover simply because cruel white folks are pretty good at covering up murder.

If you’re still worried about saying that white folks used Black infants as bait for alligators, I suggest you contact Doctor Blaine Hudson, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Louisville, as he is a wealth of information on black history in America, and can absolutely point you in the right direction to get your sources.

Bitch.