Statement of The Napa Valley Wine Train Regarding Lawsuit

Almost a dozen black women ejected from a Northern California wine country train have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit. Nikki Jones told Slate that the case may demonstrate the “hyper-visibility” women of color experience on a daily basis.

The women, part of the Sistahs on the Reading Edge book club, the oldest of whom is 83, had planned the outing for their group for months, and were halfway through the three-hour, sight-seeing and wine-sipping round-trip when they were escorted off the train by train staff – who have said they’d already warned the women that they were being too loud.

The women, who hail from cities such as Antioch, Oakland, Pittsburg, Oakley and Richmond, meant to discuss a romance novel during the ride, but they say they never got the chance. They say they were paraded through rail cars and suffered the humiliation of having other passengers stare at them.

The train’s maitre d’hotel kicked the women off the train after asking them a few times to “tone down (their noise) level”.

The company said in a statement issued by crisis public relations specialist Sam Singer that it takes allegations of discrimination very seriously and has hired a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent to investigate.

According to a press release published by their attorney, the women were humiliated when they were “were marched through the six cars comprising the entire train and turned over to police who detained the women in the hot sun”.

Johnson said the only thing the book club members were guilty of was occasionally laughing loudly together.

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.

Soon after the incident, the wine train posted a statement on Facebook asserting that the women had become unruly once the conflict escalated. Supporters of the women urged boycotts of the wine-and-dining service, heavily promoting the hashtag #laughingwhileblack on social media. But the women were angered when someone from the company posted an account on Facebook, quickly deleted, that accused them of “verbal and physical abuse toward other guests and staff”.

McCoy initially said his clients would sue only if negotiations with Wine Train for a settlement failed.

‘We accept full responsibility for our failures and for the chain of events that led to this regrettable treatment of our guests’.

“The goal of this lawsuit is to ensure that this sort of racial discrimination does not happen to anyone else”, attorney Waukeen Q. McCoy said at a news conference.

The group’s only white member, Linda Carlson, said the book club would have been treated much differently had its members been all white.