Epps edited a book, The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard, which was published in 1967 and reissued in 1991.

Epps’ stances, however, did not always coincide with those of black student leaders on campus. He expressed opposition to the approach of reformers who focused solely on racial matters.

“They should move towards improving the economic conditions of the lower classes in general, instead of just protesting Negro unemployment,” he said in 1966.

He also opposed the creation of a third-world center at a time when other universities were instituting them, he criticized the College for admitting too many unqualified black students, and he was often chided for not being militant or political enough in pushing for equality.

Even though he insisted that he was not “Dean of Negro students,” he said he remained interested in black Harvard students’ plight “because I know the pain one goes through upon encountering new, integrated situations.”

In the early 1990s, Epps was named Harvard’s race coordinator. The move was a response to the mounting racial tensions on campus that followed the Black Students Association’s (BSA) invitation to controversial City University of New York professor Leonard Jeffries to hear his allegations that Jews were complicit in the African slave trade.

Epps published the University’s first race-relations handbook in 1992, and he pushed for the screening of a film series on diversity in 1996.

The board of the BSA honored Epps after his death in a message to the organization’s e-mail list, calling him “a great man” and noting that he was going to be honored in October at the Black Alumni Weekend hosted by the association.

On several occasions in the 1960s, while Epps was touring with the Harvard Glee Club, the group traveled to perform in locales where blacks were unwelcome. On one occasion in 1965, Peabody Professor of Music Elliot Forbes ’40 reportedly received bomb threats because of plans for Epps to participate in a Birmingham, Ala., concert. Epps was “quietly, deeply upset” when the Glee Club performed without him at the show, Glee Club Secretary William White ’65 said at the time.

Epps’ incident with the Glee Club also highlighted his passion for music. He not only sang with the Glee Club as a student at the Divinity School, but he also later served as its assistant director. While he was assistant senior tutor of Leverett House, he regularly helped put on operas. He was occasionally guest conductor of the Harvard Band during football halftime shows.

“There wasn’t any form of music he didn’t like,” Valerie Epps recalled of her husband, who was also a trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Epps was raised in Louisiana and graduated from Talladega College in Alabama before matriculating at the Divinity School. He became a teaching fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in 1961 and was appointed assistant dean of the College in 1964.

Epps met his wife when he was assistant dean and she was working in Harvard’s registrar’s office as editor of the course catalogue.

During a 1967 Faculty meeting in Sanders Theatre, Epps saw his future wife—who was charged with ensuring that only people with identification entered—disallowing entry to well-known poet Robert Lowell, who was at Harvard at the time. Lowell had forgotten his identification, and Epps eventually told the employee from the registrar’s office that she should allow Lowell to attend the meeting.

Epps asked the woman out to lunch the next day. The day after that, he proposed.