Jeff Forret is University Professor of History at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He has authored or edited seven books, including the award-winning Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South, Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts, and The Price They Paid: Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War (The New Press). He lives in Lumberton, Texas.