The recognizable "Gator Bait" chant and correlating Gator chomp arm motion will no longer be heard and seen at University of Florida sporting events. The discontinuation of the cheer is part of what the school is calling The Decade Ahead plan to address racism and inequality amid a global movement.
"While I know of no evidence of racism associated with our 'Gator Bait' cheer at UF sporting events," Florida president Kent Fuchs wrote in a letter Thursday to the UF community, "there is horrific racist imagery associated with the prase. Accordingly, University Athletics and the Gator Band will discontinue the use of the cheer."
The move has prompted backlash from Florida's fan base. Which isn't much of a surprise to Paul Ortiz, a history professor at UF who has shown his students some of the images Fuchs refers to in his letter.
"I try to tell people in advance I’m not showing them because I’m trying to make anyone feel bad here," Ortiz told the Tampa Bay Times. "But I do think it’s important to understand the brutality of the history.
"It has kept people from going to Gator sports in the past. But it hasn’t risen to the level of something that people would actually protest just simply because there were so many other issues that were going on."
Ortiz indicated it’s not clear whether "gator bait" incidents actually happened. Publications that have written about it include the New Miami Times, which in 2014 cited multiple references documenting that black babies were used as alligator bait in north and central Florida during slavery and into the 20th century.
From a Fraser's Magazine excerpt cited by Snopes.com: "Alligator hunting was very profitable in the 1800-1900s. The skins were used to make shoes, bags, belts and other items. However, white hunters often lost their arms and sometimes their lives as they rustled the swampy waters at night attempting to attract alligators to the surface, so they decided to use slave babies as bait."
The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., features multiple illustrated images of black babies next to alligators. UCLA African-American studies professor Patricia Turner wrote in her 2002 book that these portrayals, presented as postcards, “depict more than just the presence of a negative stereotype; they implicitly represent a form of aggression in eradicating an unwanted people.”
Added Ortiz, who first started studying the imagery while writing his dissertation on African-American history as a graduate student: “Initially I thought it was an anomaly or something. Then you see it over and over and over again.”
The discontinuation of the "Gator Bait" cheer at UF sporting events is part of a three-part plan presented by Fuchs, who also personally committed to "removing any monuments or namings that UF can control that celebrate the Confederacy or its leaders."
Florida's SEC East rival, Georgia, is also implementing change amid the global movement against racial injustice. Brett Bawcum, the acting director of UGA's Redcoat Band, announced Wednesday the band will no longer play "Tara's Theme" from "Gone With The Wind," the 1939 film set in the antebellum South, at sporting events. It will be replaced by the school's signature "Georgia on My Mind."
"The current social climate has highlighted the urgency of addressing it and made me conscious of the message that could be interpreted by delay," Bawcum wrote.