Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Wilson Chinn: The Branded Face of Slavery’s Cruelty

Wilson Chinn: The Branded Face of Slavery’s Cruelty

Wilson Chinn was an enslaved man in Louisiana who escaped and became a powerful symbol of the brutality of slavery. He is best known for a series of haunting photographs that exposed the cruel treatment enslaved people endured. One of the most widely circulated images from the abolitionist movement shows Chinn with the initials “VBM”—marking him as the property of his owner, Volsey B. Marmillion—branded onto his forehead. He is also pictured wearing a heavy punishment collar and surrounded by instruments of torture used to control enslaved individuals.

These photographs, taken during the American Civil War, were widely shared by abolitionists to reveal the horrors of slavery and rally support for its end. Today, they remain some of the most powerful and historically significant images from that period, offering a stark reminder of the cruelty and dehumanization enslaved people faced.




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