Airbnb apologizes for Mississippi ‘slave cabin’ listed as luxury getaway after

Airbnb has faced backlash in the days since a TikTok video about the listing from Wynton Yates, an entertainment and civil rights attorney in New Orleans, went viral.

“The history of slavery in this country is constantly denied,” Yates said in the Friday video, “and now it’s being mocked by being turned into a luxurious vacation spot.” Yates, who is Black, added, “This is not okay in the least bit.”

Now, Airbnb has apologized and noted Monday that it is “removing listings that are known to include former slave quarters in the United States.”

“Properties that formerly housed the enslaved have no place on Airbnb,” Airbnb spokesman Ben Breit said in a statement. “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 address this issue.”

Brad Hauser, who took over ownership of the Greenville property last month, said in a statement to The Washington Post that even though the building had been a doctor’s office and not a quarters for enslaved people, it was “the previous owner’s decision to market the building as the place where slaves once slept.” Hauser, who is White, said he “strongly opposed” the previous owner’s decision and vowed to provide guests with a “historically accurate portrayal” of life at the Belmont Plantation.

“I am not interested in making money off slavery,” said Hauser, 52, who apologized for the listing “insulting African Americans whose ancestors were slaves.”

It’s unclear how many Airbnb listings feature properties in the United States that once housed some of the millions of enslaved Black people. Several properties in Georgia and Louisiana that were billed as quarters for enslaved people have since been removed from Airbnb’s site, according to Mic.

‘These are our ancestors’: Descendants of enslaved people are shifting plantation tourism

Yates, 34, told The Post on Tuesday that he was first made aware of the Greenville listing in a group text message. Yates said his brother’s friend was looking for rental properties in Greenville, about 100 miles northwest of Columbia, S.C., and found that the Panther Burn Cottage was the only listing available.

So when Yates’s brother shared the listing in the family group text Friday, the New Orleans attorney was floored by it and had the same thought: “This is crazy.”

“To see weddings on plantations and events on plantations and suburbs and subdivisions named after plantations and plantation owners is something I’ve been grossed out by every day of my life. But this was a new level of disrespect for what slavery was,” Yates said. “To see the space where enslaved peoples…