Fire Hazard: An Open Letter to Airbnb on Their Recent Decision to Stop Renting Out Slave Quarters
A poetic response to Airbnb's rental of slave quarters and the backlash that caused the properties' removal from their menu of options
“Recent outrage over the listed slave cabins started with the Panther Burn Cottage, a Greenville, Mississippi, slave cabin built on a plantation in the 1800s. Wynton Yates, a Black lawyer from New Orleans, posted a now-viral TikTok about the Airbnb listing late last month. He said he was shocked when he saw the listing. “My first reaction was ‘This is wild! How does anybody think this is OK?’” Yates told NBC News. “I was appalled by what I was looking at. It’s just disrespectful to all of the people who lived and died in those spaces.” - NBC News
Dear Airbnb,
I come from a region
where the iconography of enslavers
stood boldly in public squares
for centuries until
enough of a fuss was raised
to knock them off their high horses
where the names of human traffickers
were emblazoned on school buildings
and municipal facilities
where vestiges of violence
shared real estate with
courthouses, and shackled defendants
most often emerged looking a lot like
the workforce that built southern cities
under the duress of terrorists
I hear that you apologized for
renting out repurposed torture chambers
and removed the option for visitors
to find rest and relaxation
in the same cabins
my foremothers’ bodies
were ravaged against their will
you advertised these destinations as
cozy getaways
charming
rustic
accented in old-fashioned decor
but left out the haunting
the indelible odor of lacerated flesh
the blood-accented walls
were you honest about the dimensions?
did you tell interested guests that the
quarters were generally sized 1619 x 1865?
did this ever cause any hesitation from those looking to book somewhere they’d have more free space to maneuver?
or were you hopeful that each occupant
would ignore the echoes of
whip-cracking alarm clocks?
were you banking on Negro visitors
nesting comfortably or was the idea
to have a property of
segregated slumber function as
an artifact of “simpler times” for some
and signal a sundown town rest stop for coloreds to keep it moving?
if the descendants of forced dwellers
had not revolted online, how many deposits
were you planning to collect?
did you assume that you could
market revisionist history to the
point of reducing reservation reticence
or
were you looking to see how long
you could encourage travel itineraries
to be built around vacationing at
death camps without anyone
taking notice?
I’m guessing at some point
someone informed your account managers
that plantations were burned
to their foundation, post-emancipation
apparently the fear of seeing
your vintage properties fizzle in popularity
was enough to declare ‘no vacancy’
but why even choose that smoke
to begin with?