Black Women Suing Wine Train for Discrimination After They Got Kicked Off

The same employee admonished them a second time before telling them that police officers would be waiting for them when the train reached St. Helena, the suit says.

The women are being represented by leading civil rights attorney Waukeen McCoy, who said at a press conference Thursday, “This lawsuit shows that blacks are not just being treated different in big cities, but also in small towns like Napa”. The company that now owns the wine train (it was sold in September) has hired a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent to investigate the matter. The women were kicked off the train in August and say it was in part because they are black. The group, which consisted of 10 Black women and one white woman, was removed from the train because of other passengers complaints. The group is now suing Napa Valley Wine Train, which was recently bought by another company for $11 million. They say they were paraded through rail cars and suffered the humiliation of having other passengers stare at them.

Linda Carlson, the only non-black member of the book club, told reporters, “No one should ever have to experience what we did that day”.

Five members of the Sistahs on the Reading Edge book club, from left: Katherine Neal, Georgia Lewis, Lisa Renee Johnson, Allisa Carr and Sandra Jamerson.

The suit also names the train’s parent companies and three employees, according to court documents.

Following their removal from the train, the women boarded a 12-passenger van and headed back to Napa before learning that the wine train posted a Facebook comment accusing the women of engaging in “verbal and physical abuse towards other guests and staff”. The women say their reputation has been irreparably damaged.

Even though it was quickly deleted, the Facebook post angered the group of women.

“The racially charged controversy made global headlines and sparked a social media fire storm that spawned the trending hashtag, “#laughingwhileblack”. “I feel like we were being singled out”, Johnson told SFGate, saying that while they were loud, they were not “obnoxious or intoxicated”. “It really saddens me”.

“We don’t ever want our mothers, grandmothers and sisters to be disrespected like that just because of the color of their skin or because they want to ride a train and read a book”, said Dan Daniels Sr., a San Rafael-based NAACP leader.

Johnson tells the Guardian that two of the women lost their jobs over the media attention. “This is 2015. When is this going to stop?”