(CNN) — The Airbnb listing for “1830s Slave Cabin” has been removed from the rental site after a TikTok video about the property went viral.
The Panther Barn Cottage at Belmont Plantation in Greenville, Mississippi, has been removed by Airbnb, which apologized Monday for posting. The owner has also apologized, saying the cottage listing is a leftover from the previous owner who banned him from social media and property rental accounts until a TikTok post went viral.
“The property that once housed slaves is not on Airbnb. We apologize for the trauma and grief created by the existence of this listing, and others like it, and have taken no further action to address this issue.” We apologize for the inconvenience,” Airbnb said in a statement provided to CNN.
The company said it was developing a new policy, removing other listings involving former slave districts in the United States.
Brad Hauser, the new owner of Belmont Plantation, has also apologized for this list.
“As the new three-week owner of the Belmont in Greenville, Mississippi, I am pleased to announce that I have made the decision to offer my guests stays in the ‘slave quarters’ behind the 1857 pre-Civil War home. I apologize for insulting African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves,” Hauser said in a statement to CNN.
He also said that when he purchased the cottage, he was told it wasn’t a slave quarter because the building wasn’t old enough to house slaves.
An Airbnb listing, which the company has since removed, says the property is an “1830s slave cabin.”
Courtesy Wynton Yates
An undisclosed promotional video posted on YouTube by the previous owner says the cabin was moved from Panther Burn, Mississippi, to the plantation several years ago.
“I strongly disagreed with the previous owner’s decision to market the building as a place where slaves once slept after toiling in the cotton fields in human bondage,” Hauser said in a statement.
Hauser told CNN that he has no plans to rent out the cabins again.
Joshua B. Cain is listed as the previous owner in 2021 property records reviewed by CNN.
Hauser said Kane did not transfer ownership of online advertising assets related to the plantation until the dispute began.
CNN reached out to former owner Joshua Cain for comment.
“How would it be acceptable in someone’s mind to rent out a place where humans were kept as slaves as a bed and breakfast?” Yates, an entertainment attorney in New Orleans, said he asked in a viral post on
Wynton Yates captured these images of the cabin before the listing was taken down.
Courtesy Wynton Yates
Yates, who is black, told CNN that renting out the refurbished cabin was “a terrible level of atrocities that disrespects and ridicules the experience of slavery because we are in a country that still experiences it.” It’s up… the effects of slavery.”
In the first TikTok video about the property, Yates said he was particularly upset by guest reviews.
“We stayed in a cabin, and it was historic yet elegant,” one guest wrote in a review, shown in the video screengrab and read aloud by Yates. “Slave cabins are elegant,” he repeated incredulously.
“This country’s history of slavery has always been denied and now ridiculed by being turned into a luxury vacation spot,” he said on TikTok.
Yates told CNN that plantation owners, or anyone wishing to purchase a plantation, should research the slaves who lived and worked on the land so that history can be accurately accounted for.
He said attacks on teaching an accurate history of slavery and attempts to erase history would lead future generations to think of slavery as a myth.
Hauser, the new owner, told CNN that he is looking for experts who can identify the people who lived and were enslaved at Belmont Plantation and provide an accurate account of their history.
Source: www.cnn.com
