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Book Club Members Kicked Off Napa Valley Train For Being ‘Too Loud’ Settle Suit

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. (Carlos Fajardo/Rex Shutterstock)

The group of predominately Black women who filed a racial discrimination suit against the Napa Valley Wine Train have settled the case for an undisclosed amount. The East Bay, California book club filed the $11 million suit against the company after they were kicked out for being “too loud.”

Waukeen McCoy, the attorney representing the Sistahs on the Reading Edge book club, broke the news to The Mercury News on Monday. He said the case’s two parties held a private mediation and reached an amicable settlement April 14. The amount is confidential.

McCoy says he hopes businesses like the wine train will add sensitivity and diversity to their programs so there is never another incident like the one that occurred last year.

Lisa Renee Johnson, author and leader of the 11-member book club, told Mercury the women are “relieved that we were able to resolve the matter. I think it’s something we can put behind us.”

According to Atlanta Black Star, the group of 10 Black women and one white woman was removed from the wine train in August 2015 for “laughing while Black.” Other passengers’ complaints caused the women to be led off the train by armed police officers. The club members later said they were humiliated. Two of them lost their jobs over the incident.

The Napa Valley Wine Train later issued an apology on Facebook that said in part, “the Wine Train has its own railroad police that escort the train every day. Following verbal and physical abuse towards other guests and staff, it was necessary to get our police involved.”

The post was deleted Aug. 22. According to CNN, the company later sent a letter to the women that did not allege violence.

“In the haste to respond to criticism and news inquires, we made a bad situation worse by rushing to answer questions on social media,” CEO Anthony Giaccio said in the letter. “We quickly removed the inaccurate post, but the harm was done by our erroneous post.”

In October 2015, the book club members filed a lawsuit to show racism still exists in America.

That same month, the women discussed their experience with daytime talk show The Real. Allisa Carr said at the time that she hopes people learn to check their prejudices.

“What we want people to learn is just to be careful of your biases of other people and how you view a group of people when you’re around them and how you use your power if you’re in a position of power to make decisions that will then render and how it will affect other people’s lives.”

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