Were black children actually used as alligator bait in the South?

I have never found even a single reliable source that testifies to the existence or prevalence of this practice, and have every reason to believe that it is sensationalism based on anecdotes in the historical record, usually claimed to be real in the pursuit of a political agenda. I have seen supposed ex-slave or slave descendant testimony invoked that I cannot find for the life of me replicated anywhere, and which is only ever reproduced in the context of this story.

I am aware of only only one or two slave narratives that include any discussion at all of alligators in general (and at least one of those is essentially a piece of historical fiction written by a white abolitionist in New York); no narrative that I have ever read includes any kind of reference to the practice of using black children as bait for alligators. Given that slave narratives were typically produced for the purpose of promoting the abolitionist cause, it seems odd that such a practice would be absent from them in such totality given its very obvious propaganda value in demonstrating the severity of slavery. Nor can I find any reference to the practice in William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, probably the foremost and certainly one of the most radical abolitionist news publications of the antebellum period.

Nearly all of the references to the practice in the historical record come from newspaper articles in the early 20th century, which themselves are usually reporting on anecdotal or distant events without signs of any kind of verification. It seems to based largely on the use of phrases like "gator bait" as a racial slur (which by no means implies any kind of actual practice) and in racist artwork, one story of a zookeeper enlisting two black children to help him deal with an alligator that may or may not be true, and reports about an incident in Ceylon (which is more likely than not sensationalist rumour). The practice is about as far away from "well documented" as you can get.

There is no reason, in my view, to believe that it is anything more than a long-standing popular myth, advanced today by people with a political agenda to promote. There is no real evidence at all for its practice during slavery (and I cannot imagine how it would become one post-emancipation). Whilst many slave owners were certainly capable of intense cruelty, this does not seem to have been a real example of it.