(CNN) — An Airbnb itemizing for “an 1830s slave cabin” has been faraway from the rental website after a TikTok video concerning the property went viral.
Airbnb has eliminated Panther Burn Cottage, situated on Belmont Plantation in Greenville, Mississippi, and the corporate apologized for the itemizing on Monday. The proprietor additionally apologized, saying the cabin itemizing was a holdover from the earlier proprietor, who had blocked him from social media and property rental accounts till the TikTok submit went viral.
“Properties that beforehand housed the enslaved don’t have any place on Airbnb. We apologize for any trauma or ache created by the presence of this itemizing, and others prefer it, and we took no motion earlier to deal with this challenge,” Airbnb mentioned in an announcement. assertion supplied to CNN.
The corporate mentioned it’s eradicating different listings that embrace former slave quarters within the US and growing new insurance policies.
Belmont Plantation’s new proprietor, Brad Hauser, additionally apologized for the itemizing.
“As the brand new proprietor of three weeks of The Belmont in Greenville, Mississippi, I apologize for the choice to supply our company with a keep in ‘the slave quarters’ behind the pre-Struggle of 1857 residence that’s now a mattress and breakfast. I additionally apologize for insulting African-Individuals whose ancestors had been slaves,” Hauser mentioned in an announcement to CNN.
He additionally mentioned that when he purchased the farmhouse he was instructed that it was not a slave quarters as a result of the constructing was not sufficiently old to have housed enslaved folks.
The Airbnb itemizing, which the corporate has since eliminated, says the property is “an 1830s slave cabin.”
courtesy of Wynton Yachts
In a now-private promotional video posted on YouTube by earlier house owners, the cabin is alleged to have been relocated a number of years in the past to the plantation in Panther Burn, Mississippi, and was initially a two-bedroom sharecropper’s cabin that was transformed into a physician’s workplace.
Hauser mentioned in his assertion that he “strongly opposed the earlier proprietor’s determination to market the constructing because the place the place slaves as soon as slept after toiling within the cotton fields in human captivity.”
Hauser tells CNN that he has no plans to lease the cabin once more.
Joshua B. Cain is listed as a earlier proprietor in 2021 property information reviewed by CNN.
Hauser says that Cain didn’t switch possession of the internet marketing belongings related to the plantation till the controversy started.
CNN has reached out to earlier proprietor Joshua Cain for remark.
“How is it proper in anybody’s thoughts to lease this, a spot the place people had been saved as slaves, to lease this as a mattress and breakfast?” Yates, an leisure lawyer in New Orleans, requested in his viral submit.
Wynton Yates captured these photos of the cabin earlier than it was delisted.
courtesy of Wynton Yachts
Yates, who’s African-American, instructed CNN that renting the renovated cabin is “an appalling leveling of this outrage of simply disrespecting and making enjoyable of what the slave expertise is as a result of we’re in a rustic the place we’re nonetheless experiencing the repercussions.” of slavery.”
In his preliminary TikTok video concerning the property, Yates mentioned he was particularly upset concerning the visitor critiques.
“We stayed within the cabin and it was historic however elegant,” one visitor wrote in a overview proven on a screenshot within the video that Yates learn aloud. “A slave cabin is elegant,” he repeats incredulously.
“The historical past of slavery on this nation is consistently being denied, and now they make enjoyable of it by turning it into an expensive trip spot,” he mentioned on TikTok.
Yates instructed CNN that it’s as much as the plantation house owners or these wishing to buy them to analyze the enslaved individuals who lived and labored on the land in order that an correct account of historical past might be given.
He mentioned assaults on the instructing of an correct historical past of slavery and makes an attempt to erase historical past will make future generations assume slavery is a fantasy.
Hauser, the brand new proprietor, instructed CNN that he’s working to search out consultants who will help him establish the individuals who lived and had been enslaved at Belmont Plantation to supply an correct account of historical past.
