SPAIN – 2021/04/15: In this photo illustration the Airbnb app seen displayed on a smartphone screen with the Airbnb logo in the background. (Photo Illustration by Thiago Prudencio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Airbnb removed a listing on Monday of a Mississippi property that had housed slaves following a viral TikTok criticizing the “slave shack” platform advertised as a bed-and-breakfast.
New Orleans attorney Wynton Yates criticized the company in a TikTok Video last week and posted screenshots of the Greenville, Mississippi listing advertised as “The Panther Burn Cottage at Belmont Plantation.”
The screenshot’s description says the property is an “1830s slave cabin” that also served as a “tenant sharecroppers cabin” and “medical office for local farmers and their families.”
Yates’ video has been viewed more than 2.6 million times.
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The property changed hands last month and new owner Brad Hauser told USA Today that it was a doctor’s office and not a “slave quarter”. He also said the property was “the previous owner’s decision to market the building as the place where slaves once slept”, a decision he “strongly opposed”.
Airbnb said in a statement that it has deleted the list, as well as others that would have included former slave quarters in the United States
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“Properties that once housed slaves 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 resolve this issue.”
The company said it was working with experts to establish new policies for managing slavery-related properties.
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Hauser said he would also seek expert advice and planned to offer clients a “historically accurate depiction” of life at the property for everyone who lived there, including those who were downsized. in slavery.
“I intend to do everything I can to right a terrible wrong and hopefully get the publicity back on Airbnb, so The Belmont can contribute to the most urgent demand for truth about history not only from the South, but from the whole nation,” he said.
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