Members of a mostly African American book club, booted from the Napa Valley Wine Train in August after they were accused of being loud and boisterous, sued the train’s owners for racial discrimination Thursday, charging they were humiliated in front of other passengers and defamed on social media.

Two of the 11 women said the ordeal caused them to lose their jobs.

“Blacks are still being treated differently in America,” attorney Waukeen McCoy said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco. It seeks $11 million in damages, $1 million for each of the plaintiffs — 10 African Americans and one white woman.

“I truly now know how it feels to be a black woman,” said the white plaintiff, Linda Carlson, 55, a mail carrier in Contra Costa County. Along with the rest of the group, she was escorted off the train, past rows of other passengers, and handed over to a waiting police officer.

Having fun

The women, members of a book club called Sistahs on the Reading Edge, boarded the train in Napa on Aug. 22 for their first round-trip through Wine Country. They said they were laughing and having a good time, occasionally chatting with other passengers, when a train manager, Anna Marquinn, approached and asked them to lower their voices.

The women said Marquinn returned a little later and warned them they would be removed from the train if they didn’t pipe down.

Book-club member Lisa Johnson, 47, a manager at a family service agency in Concord, said she told Marquinn they weren’t behaving any differently than other passengers and were being singled out because of their race. She said Marquinn denied any racist motives and identified herself as Latina.

At St. Helena, halfway through the three-hour trip, the women said they were ordered off the train, marched past passengers in all six cars, and turned over to a police officer from the Napa Valley Railroad. Many of the passengers “snickered” at them as they walked by, the suit said, and a number of white passengers were “inebriated and acting boisterous” but were not removed from the train.

Tira McDonald, 47, said the humiliation continued after they were kicked off the train.

“We had to stand in the hot sun and have people on the train look at us as if we were criminals,” said McDonald, a bank program manager.

The train company refunded their $62 fares and provided a van to take them back to Napa. But the women were angered when someone from the company posted an account on Facebook that accused them of “verbal and physical abuse toward other guests and staff.”

Social media comments

The company quickly deleted the posting, but it had been widely circulated and generated many hostile comments on social media, McCoy said. As a result, he asserted, two of the plaintiffs lost their jobs — Allisa Carr, 48, of Antioch, a manager at a local bank, and Debbie Reynolds, 49, also of Antioch, a hospital nurse.

McCoy and the two women declined to discuss the dismissals or say whether their employers had mentioned the train incident. But the attorney said news of their removal had traveled quickly, and “we don’t think it was a coincidence” that they were terminated soon afterward.

Carlson said the publicity led to a heartbreaking moment when her 5-year-old granddaughter, who had heard media reports, told her, “You were being very disrespectful to those people on the train.”

To win their case, the women would have to prove that they were singled out because of their race and not their behavior. A Wine Train spokeswoman has said guests are removed from the train about once a month.

The Wine Train’s chief executive, Anthony Giaccio, apologized to the women two days after the incident, said the train staff had been “100 percent wrong,” and offered a free future trip for the women and 39 friends in a private car. McCoy said the offer wouldn’t come close to compensating the women for the harm to their reputations and for the trauma they still suffer.

The suit drew support from representatives of the local and statewide NAACP branches. The Rev. Amos Brown, chairman of the NAACP in San Francisco, said at the news conference that the incident should puncture the myth that “California is liberal and progressive.”

“It is worse than some of the Southern states,” Brown said.

Ex-FBI agent investigating

On Thursday, the train’s new owners, who would be on the hook for damages if the women win their suit, said the company “takes the allegations of discrimination very seriously” and has hired a former FBI agent to investigate the incident.

The Wine Train, founded nearly 26 years ago by the late Rice-a-Roni executive Vincent DeDomenico, was sold last month. The new owners are Noble House Hotels & Resorts of Seattle and Brooks Street, a real estate development and investment company with an office in Walnut Creek.

They have not announced any plans to change the train’s operations or staff.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko