An Airbnb logo during an event in San Francisco. AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File
Airbnb has removed listing of properties that once housed enslaved people, a move that comes after a viral TikTok user exposed a “slave cabin” turned bed and breakfast listing in Mississippi.
Wynton Yates, a Black lawyer from New Orleans, posted the video to social media over the San Francisco-based company’s listing of the Panther Burn Cottage at Belmont Plantation in Greenville, Mississippi. The structure was described as an “1830s slave cabin,” that was also used as a “tenant sharecroppers’ cabin” as well as a “medical office for local farmers and their families,” USA Today reported.
Belmont Planation was built in 1857 and advertises itself as the “last antebellum mansion along the river in the Mississippi Delta.” The main house offers space for weddings, events, tours and bed-and-breakfast accommodations.
Yates told USA Today the listing was a “mockery of the experience,” of enslaved people.
Airbnb responded with a statement and an apology.
“Properties that formerly housed the enslaved have no place on Airbnb,” Airbnb said. “We apologize for any trauma or grief created by the presence of this listing, and others like it, and that we did not act sooner to address this issue.”
The company said it is working with experts to develop policies for dealing with properties tied to slavery.
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