An Airbnb listing in Mississippi advertised as a ‘slave shack’ has been removed from the site following backlash on social media.
Airbnb has apologized after a TikTok video went viral criticizing the description of a cottage in Greenville. The bed and breakfast was marketed as an “1830s slave cabin”.
The “meticulously restored” property, with a new TV and premium streaming channels, has been described as a “tenant sharecropper’s hut and medical practice for local farmers and their families to see the plantation doctor”.
The listing caught the eye of Wynton Yates, a black lawyer from New Orleans.
“How is it acceptable in someone’s mind to rent that?” A place where human beings were kept as slaves? Yates asked in his video.
In response to the video, which has been viewed more than 2.7 million times, Airbnb said properties that once housed slaves had no place on the site.
“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 in a statement.
Airbnb said it removed the Mississippi listing from its site and is doing the same for other listings known to include former slave quarters in the United States.
In a follow-up video, Yates released what he said was a statement from cabin owner Brad Hauser. The statement includes an apology for offering guests a stay in the “slave quarters” behind a pre-war house that is now a bed and breakfast.
“I also apologize for insulting African Americans whose ancestors were slaves,” the statement read.
The statement also alleges that the previous owner misinterpreted the property’s history as a former plantation-related slave shack.
Hauser said he took ownership of the cabin three weeks ago, WLBT-TV reported.
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