The train was moving, but she was not.
NAACP attorney Sherrilyn Ifill was asked to get up and move from her seat on an Amtrak train Friday night, she announced in a tweet. Ifill said a junior conductor told her there were ”other people coming who she wants to give this seat.”
NAACP attorney Sherrilyn Ifill was asked to get up and move from her seat on an Amtrak train Friday night. (Twitter)
Ifill “made it clear" she was uninterested in moving in the general admission, largely empty car.
She was on her way from Washington D.C. to Baltimore when the conductor made the request.
What really disturbs me is how someone with this authority can just entirely make up something so ridiculous and approach a customer in this way. I did wonder when she was carrying on - how far will I take this? And the immediate answer in my mind was “all the way.”
— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) January 17, 2020
Ifill said that she remained in her seat until leaving the train in Baltimore, where she told the head conductor about what happened.
“I laid out the facts and made clear that I know [that] it is absolutely contrary to policy and unacceptable to pick one passenger from an unassigned seat and demand she move. Lead conductor (man) just has his mouth open. The woman agent/conductor now drops her head,” Ifill wrote in one explanatory tweet. She said the lead conductor admitted he had “no explanation” for the request and apologized.
After calling out Amtrak several times on Twitter, Ifill received an official apology from the company Saturday.
While Ifill, president and director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, passed on the obvious Rosa Parks comparison herself, several followers made it for her.
She did say that she’d be willing to give up her seat for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.