Bodies as Commodities: The Forgotten Horrors of Slavery

Slavery in the United States is often remembered for the forced labor, brutal punishments, and the selling of men, women, and children as property. But what is less talked about—and perhaps more chilling—is the way enslaved bodies themselves were sometimes turned into objects even after death.

From the very beginning of American slavery in the 1600s, Africans were treated as commodities, their humanity stripped away. That dehumanization opened the door to horrors that can be difficult to comprehend today. There are accounts from the 1800s describing the skin of enslaved Black people being used to make leather goods. Newspapers carried stories of physicians and craftsmen who claimed that tanned Black skin produced especially durable leather. Some even boasted of shoes or pouches fashioned from it, speaking of the material as if it were no different from cowhide. The very idea tells us just how far the system of slavery pushed people into rationalizing cruelty.

Hair, too, was not spared. In Georgia and the Carolinas, furniture restorers have uncovered 200-year-old chairs stuffed not with horsehair or cotton, but with strands identified as belonging to enslaved Africans. Slave hair was sometimes used as padding for cushions or mattresses. Imagine the intimacy of sitting on a piece of furniture, never realizing it was literally filled with the remnants of a human being whose body had been denied dignity.

Why would anyone do something so grotesque? For some, it was a matter of convenience and cost. Leather and stuffing materials were expensive, and enslaved people were seen as resources to be exploited in every possible way. For others, it was part of a culture that had so thoroughly dehumanized Black people that even their bodies were treated as usable material. What most of us recognize as horrifying today was, in the twisted logic of slavery, a matter of utility or even curiosity.

The people who bought or used these items were typically members of the white elite—physicians who might commission a pair of shoes, wealthy families who filled their parlors with fine chairs, plantation owners who treated Black lives as raw material. These objects did not circulate widely; they were not common. But their existence reveals the extremes of disrespect and commodification that slavery enabled.

Such practices faded with the end of slavery in 1865. There was never a specific law against using human skin or hair in this way, but when the institution collapsed, so did many of the practices that depended on it. As attitudes slowly shifted, even the most hardened white supremacists could no longer speak openly about these acts without shame. They were driven underground, relegated to whispers, and finally consigned to the category of unspeakable horrors.

It is tempting to dismiss these accounts as rare or sensationalized, but the fact that they happened at all is enough to demand our attention. They remind us that the violence of slavery did not end at the whip or the auction block. It extended into the very flesh and hair of the enslaved, carrying the logic of dehumanization to its ultimate, grotesque conclusion.

To tell this story today is not to sensationalize, but to honor those who endured such indignities. By speaking their truth, we acknowledge that slavery was not just about unpaid labor—it was about stripping away humanity in every imaginable form. Remembering this ensures that we confront the full depth of what was done, and why we must never forget.