Outrage after 1830s "slave cabin" listed for rent
Airbnb have copped an online slating after one of their listings, which was advertised as a bed and breakfast, was exposed as a former slave cabin.
A user on TikTok found “The Panther Burn Cottage at Belmont Plantation” listing in Greenville, Mississippi, which was described as an “1830s slave cabin” and used as a “tenant sharecropper’s cabin”.
The property was available to rent for $165 per night, and was slammed by TikTokker and lawyer Wynton Yates, who expressed his shock over the property saying it was anything but quaint and charming as described by some of its guests in reviews.
“This is not OK in the least bit,” he said.
“And I know there’s going to be someone saying ‘Oh you’re looking for controversy where it doesn’t exist.’ No."
“This is an 1830s slave cabin up on Airbnb as a bed and breakfast."
“They say it in the listing, ‘This particular structure, the Panther Burn Cabin, is an 1830s slave cabin from the extant Panther Burn Plantation to the south of Belmont.’"
“How is this OK in someone’s mind to rent this out? A place where human beings were kept as slaves.”
While the listing itself was alarming, what really concerned and infuriated Wynton was the reviews from previous guests.
“We stayed in the sharecropper cabin and ate in the main house. The house tour was great and so was the breakfast,” one review read.
“’We stayed in the cabin and it was a historic but elegant’ – a slave cabin is elegant?” a furious Wynton asked.
“The history of slavery in this country is constantly denied and now it is being mocked by being turned into a luxurious vacation spot.”
Wynton's video was viewed over 3 million times, which prompted Airbnb to remove the listing entirely.
“Properties that formerly housed the enslaved have no place on Airbnb,” Airbnb said in a statement to USA Today.
“We apologise 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’s working with experts on developing new policies for dealing with properties tied to slavery.
Image credits: TikTok