Edwin Epps: The Slave Master Whose Extreme Cruelty Made Him One of the Most Infamous Figures of American Slavery

Slavery produced countless victims and countless perpetrators. Most slave owners faded into obscurity, but Edwin Epps remains infamous because one of the men he enslaved survived to tell the world exactly what happened on his plantation. His memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, would eventually become the basis for the acclaimed 2013 film, ensuring that Epps’s […] TalkAfricana