‘Imagine how many slaves it took’: TikTok shows furniture restorer finding slave hair in a 200-year-old chair

A viral video resurfaced on TikTok showing a furniture restorer finding slave hair in a 200-year-old chair. 

The repost, which has over 191,000 views, was posted by @karahbura to TikTok, with the hashtag-heavy caption, "#blackhistory #slavery #jimcrow #history #capitalism #blm." The video shows a chair that's been broken down for restoration.

"I want everybody to see this chair; this is not propaganda at all," explains the man at the start of the video. "This chair right here is 200 years old."

"This 200-year-old chair came from somewhere in north Georgia," he continues. "We are restoring this chair, [and] we gotta make it brand new."

https://ift.tt/3gsZhFB?

The restorer says that he "didn't just assume" and

"actually asked" to get details about the chair.

"I want y'all to see this: Usually old, ancient chairs like this, you feel them with whatever you can get your hands on as filler. This one, apparently, has cotton, handpicked cotton that's been sat on for over 200 years. [But] it's made with solid wood, so it's gonna last forever," he says.

However, he then pulls the camera toward the chair, saying, "I want y'all to see this. This is human hair."

He pulls out a large tuft of hair that's padding the chair and repeats, "This is literally human hair. Imagine how many slaves it took to put human hair in this seat. The full interior of this seat is human, not horse, not cow, or pig hair. This is actual human hair."

He says the chair comes from a "wealthy" Georgia family and that they are keeping it for "sentimental" value.

"I want you to think about that when you are standing up for your flag," he adds.

The video resurfaces on the internet every so often. It seems to have first surfaced online in 2016 and resurfaced as recently as 2020. One comment on the repost on

TikTok summarized the emotion of the video for many: "I've seen this twice and both times I cried. The horrors of what happened to these people are like levels of hell. I hope people learn from this."

The post ‘Imagine how many slaves it took’: TikTok shows furniture restorer finding slave hair in a 200-year-old chair appeared first on The Daily Dot.