A California woman claims she had a Rosa Parks experience on a recent Delta Airlines flight when she was asked to give up her seat and move to the back of the plane in order to accommodate two white women.
As reported by Revolt, Camille Henderson was on her way back to the Bay Area from Atlanta on Feb. 3 when Delta flight attendants asked her to give her her seat after the two white women sitting next to her in the same row complained about not having enough room.
“They felt like they were ticketed first-class seats, but they couldn’t provide the tickets,” Henderson told ABC7 News.
The two women reportedly complained to flight attendants for over an hour before Henderson was asked by airline staff to move to row 34, the plane’s last row. Henderson shared an audio recording with ABC7 News, in which someone is heard asking her, “Are you flying by yourself?”
Henderson confirms that she is, and the person responds, “There’s a seat back there in aisle 34. It’s an aisle seat.”
That’s when the recording stops, according to the report.
Henderson’s ticket was for a window seat in row 15. Instead of standing her ground and refusing to give up the seat, Henderson complied out of fear of retaliation.
“I don’t want to make it a race thing, but instead of asking the two white women that were seated next to me [to move], in an attempt to accommodate them, they basically made me have to move,” she said. “I just don’t know why I had to move because that was the seat that I paid for; that was my assigned seat.”
Henderson said the walk to the back of the plane was humiliating.
“As I’m walking back there, it’s just humiliating,” she said of the experience. “It’s like having the entire flight look at you and asking what’s going on.”
After the flight, Henderson attempted to file a complaint with Delta customer service but was told the matter was out of their hands. The customer service representative actually seemed a bit perplexed about the motive behind her complaint.
Henderson said the rep asked her, “How were you humiliated for them to ask you to go to another seat?”
Delta released the following statement to ABC7 in response to Henderson’s experience: “We are looking into this situation to better understand what happened. Delta has no tolerance for discrimination in any form and these allegations run counter to our deeply-held values of respecting and honoring the diversity of our customers.”
“I just want them to acknowledge that they made me feel powerless, and they can’t do that to customers moving forward,” Henderson said. “Me, as a Black woman, I was displaced to make two white women comfortable. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
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