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A video of a furniture restorer revealing the human hair of slaves stuffed in a 200-year old chair recently resurfaced on TikTok and has gone viral once again.
Reposted on the TikTok page of Karahbura Nebjari, under the handle, @karahbura, the video is narrated by a furniture restorer, who began the video by showing us a 200-year-old chair, and announcing "this is not propaganda at all."
@karahbura #blackhistory #slavery #jimcrow #history #capitalism #blm
He then revealed he was tasked to restore the chair, which came from north Georgia, and "make it look brand new."
After bringing his camera closer to the torn open upholstery on the chair's seat, the narrator revealed he asked about the details of the chair and "he didn't just assume."
Sharing old chairs like the one in the video were filled with anything you could possibly stuff them with, he first showed the cotton which lined the chair, which he stressed was "hand-picked."
But the video took a disturbing turn as he closed in on the contents stuffed below the cotton and the leather on the seat—human hair.
"This is literally human hair."
"Imagine how many slaves it took to put human hair in this seat."
"The full interior of the seat is human hair, human, not horse, not cow, like they usually do, pig hair, horse hair, this is actual human hair, slave hair."
After stressing chairs of this era were commonly stuffed with animal hair, usually horse or pig, the restorer revealed this particular chair came from a "very wealthy" Georgia family, who wanted to keep the chair because of it's "historical and sentimental value."
After taking some of the human hair stuffing out and bringing it closer to the camera, the anonymous furniture restorer then asked viewers for the third time to imagine how many slaves it took to stuff the chair.
He ended the video with a somber point for viewers to ponder.
"I want you all to think about that when you're standing up for your flag, as a true American today"
"How many humans did it take to cut to put in this chair?"
His contemplative offering, not to mention seeing this blatant reminder of America's ugly history, certainly got Karaburah's TikTok followers thinking, with many of them reacting with shock and horror.
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Several followers were horrified the family this chair belongs to actually wanted to keep the chair, knowing it was stuffed with the hair of slaves.
@karahbura/TikTok
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But many followers agreed this chair should be in a museum, as is, as a reminder of our troubled past and all the horrors slaves had to endure.
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The video was first posted on the YouTube page of what appears to be the restorer in the video, using the screen name Lion Fatal.
The video subsequently resurfaced in a viral Twitter chain in November of 2020.
One doesn't doubt it will go viral once again in another few years, nor does one doubt anyone will be any less moved or haunted by its content.