Eleven African American women were kicked off a Napa Valley Wine Train on Saturday for allegedly laughing and talking too loudly in an incident that has sparked widespread anger and the hashtag #LaughingWhileBlack.  The women, one of whom was 83, were members of a book club, the Sisters on the Reading Edge, and were taking part in their annual trip through wine country, wearing matching shirts, drinking wine and enjoying appetizers.  The Napa Valley Wine Train is a restaurant on board a train that travels for 25 miles through the heart of Napa Valley while passengers eat and drink from an award-winning wine list.  The staff on board received several noise complaints from other parties on the train, according to a Napa Valley Wine Train spokesman, Sam Singer. They asked the group to quieten down three times and, following the third attempt, they gave the group the choice of “reducing their noise level or departing the train”, Singer said. One woman on the train told the group that it was “not a bar”, according to one member of the group, Lisa Renee Johnson’s Facebook page.  “The train is set up to be with your friends, to drink wine and have a good time,” Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We were thinking, ‘Who are we offending?’”  A Yelp review by a woman giving her name as Danielle S, published on Sunday, said: “I watched in disbelief as staff harassed a group of people who were merely drinking wine and laughing. I’d like to think it wasn’t a racially motivated act, but given the fact that other, non-black guests were behaving in the same way and not removed, I can only conclude that it was discrimination.”  Once the train reached the St Helena stop, the group was escorted off. They “paraded us through six cars and none of us are even drunk”, Johnson wrote on Facebook.  Singer said that people are asked to leave or are removed from the train approximately once a month “because of one issue or another”.  Once leaving the train, the group of women were met by officers from the Napa Valley Railroad and St Helena police departments. No police action was taken. It is the Napa Valley Railroad police force’s policy to stand by when someone is removed from the train, chief Jeff Hullquist told the San Francisco Chronicle.  The Napa Valley Wine Train company refunded the group’s tickets and sent a van to drive them back to Napa, according to Singer.  “They gave us a full refund … but that’s not enough. We are totally humiliated,” Johnson tweeted.  On Sunday, the company posted a comment regarding the incident. Johnson took a screenshot of the status. It has since been deleted.  “Following verbal and physical abuse toward other guests and staff, it was necessary to get our police involved,” the post said. “Many groups come on board and celebrate. When those celebrations impact our other guests, we do intervene.”  The company has attempted to contact members of the book club over the weekend and again today in order to “apologize” and “listen to their concerns and complaints”, Singer said.  “We also want to explain the reasons why this occurred and we’re looking forward to having that discussion with them,” Singer said.  Johnson maintains that they did nothing wrong and were not overly disruptive. Following the incident, she tweeted: “All we were guilty of was #laughingwhileblack”.
A rail tour through California’s wine country ended abruptly for 11 African American women after complaints they were laughing and talking too loudly