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​Eleven Black Women Were Kicked Off a Train for Laughing Too Loud

"The train is set up to to be with your friends, to drink wine, and to have a good time... Who were we offending?"
Photo via Flickr user Jack Snell

Read: Did I Get Away with Felony Drug-Dealing Charges Because I'm White?

Getting wine-drunk on a train in Napa Valley sounds pretty good if you're the guys from Sideways or the parents in Bob's Burgers, but it's apparently a lot less fun if you're a black woman with a loud laugh.

A group of 11 women, members of the Sistahs on the Edge book club, were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train last Saturday for allegedly being too loud and disturbing other passengers—but the women say it was because of their race.

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One of the book club's members, Lisa Johnson, chronicled the event on Facebook, igniting an outcry across social media and inspiring the hashtag #LaughingWhileBlack.

"I felt like it was a racist attack on us," Johnson later told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We were being singled out."

According to Johnson, the train's manager approached the group—which included an 83-year-old grandmother—and said that the ladies would have to leave if they "didn't tone it down."

"The train is set up to be with your friends, to drink wine, and to have a good time … We were thinking, 'Who are we offending?'"

The real humiliation, said Johnson, came from being escorted on a "walk of shame" through the rest of the train cars before the women were asked to leave at the next train station stop.

The Napa Valley Wine Train gave each of the women a full refund after the fact, but Johnson is holding out for "a public apology for the humiliations they caused to us as professional women." They are considering taking legal action.

"Napa Valley Wine Train CEO Tony Giaccio reached out to the book club [on Wednesday] and spoke with its leader Lisa Johnson," Singer told VICE. "He apologized and said the wine train accepted full responsibility for its failures and for the chain of events that led to this regrettable treatment of the women." Photo via Flickr user Jack Snell