Black TikToker Calls Airbnb Superhost for Renting Former Slave Cabin, Website Disabled Account

A Mississippi Airbnb host has removed one of his properties from the service after a popular social media influencer exposed him for renting the former slave cabin to the public. The owners had marketed the cabin as luxury accommodation until public backlash said he was monetizing America’s ugliest sin.

Entertainment and civil rights attorney Wynton Yates took to his TikTok profile on July 29 to slam Belmont Plantation for providing neighborhoods from 19 smart TVs with basic channels, Netflix and on-demand channels like HBO, internet radio and a variety from premium streaming channels, including news, lifestyle and sports channels.”

The post was originally shared with Yates by his brother, who shared it in his family’s group chat. At first he said he didn’t believe it was genuine, but was offended when he investigated that it was an authentic listing.

“Grow up, [my family] I would take my siblings, my cousins, and myself and put slave shackles in our hands so we could feel the weight of the steel placed on our ancestors’ bodies to hold them in place,” Yates noted. “To see someone just ridiculously make fun of it just didn’t sit well with me.”

In his first video, he posts part of the listing that describes the history of the building. It states: “This particular structure, the Panther Burn Cabin, is an 1830’s slave cabin from the surviving Panther Burn Plantation south of Belmont. It has also been used as a sharecropper’s cabin and as a doctor’s office for local farmers and their families to see the plantation doctor.”

The listing goes on to say that the Greensville property has been “carefully restored” and that if you have any questions (before the location was deleted), you can contact Brad, the superhost.

Yates asks, “In one’s mind, how is it okay to rent out a place where people were kept as slaves… to rent out as a bed and breakfast?”

Reviews from over a year ago were delightfully positive.

A woman named Katie wrote: “Memorable. Highly recommend watching the sunset!” Another person named Peter wrote: “We stayed in the tenants’ cottage and ate in the main house. The house tour was great and so was the breakfast.”

Kristin, a renter, commented, “We thoroughly enjoyed our stay. The cottage, the history, the tour, the breakfast, everything was great and made for a perfect stop on our cross country hike!”

“This place was so beautiful and peaceful,” said Victoria Lynn in her review. “We stayed in the cottage and it was (sic) historic but elegant. The bed was very comfortable. The (sic) cabin was equipped with everything we needed and more. The location is just far enough from town that felt like stepping back into history.”

While many of the reviews were flowery, some were straight to the point. Terry wrote: “Cool place. Much better than a hotel.”

In Yates’ 1:34 comment, he sarcastically remarked, “You might think this will give people a glimpse of how enslaved people had to live [and] their circumstances?”

He quickly dismissed this, however, showing the claw-foot tub, lighting fixtures, towels, dressers and running water, all things that enslaved Africans in the 19th century would not have had.

“The history of slavery is constantly denied,” he said. “Now it’s being mocked by being turned into a luxurious vacation spot.”

Yates later stated, “The owner of the property makes money from slavery.”

According to the lawyer, the history of slavery simply does not care about the people behind the listing, but rather they would romanticize it.

“They don’t care about the real history of this room,” says Yates. “They take care of the plantation in its visual beauty. … They have the privilege of mentally removing themselves from this story because they are unaffected by it in the present.”

In a follow-up video, Yates shared that the cabin didn’t originally exist because it currently exists. It was brought there from another plantation before it was renovated.

A few people commented on the videos and suggested destroying or removing the booth (and other similar ones), but Yates disagrees. He believes that structures associated with the antebellum South should be preserved and restored to their original condition so that people can learn the truth about American history, no matter how hard it is to digest.

“I think things like that should stay. The owners of these properties today should have an obligation (or feel an obligation) to research and actually find the history of these places,” he said. “Find the people who lived there… their lives… their names… because they are the ancestors of humans.”

Another reason these sites should be restored, according to Yates, is that some Southern schools may change the way slavery is taught under a new social studies standards proposal gaining traction in Texas.

The state board of education was asked to describe the transatlantic slave trade as “involuntary resettlement.”

An Airbnb spokesman issued a statement to Mic.com regarding the slave cabin listing, saying, “We take this report seriously and have disabled all listings associated with this property while we investigate.”

However, the platform had other slave cabins for rent on the site, which cost just $167 a night, Mic.com reported.

One was listed as a “little house” on a Georgia plantation, named after a slave who lived there. Several lists in Louisiana concerned slave huts or houses described as quarters for enslaved Africans. The listings — all apparently changed since the Mic.com report — described the properties variously as “historically renovated slave barracks” and “restored ‘haunted’ former slave huts.”