The events happened last January. Suddenly, and with a flight about to leave, eight black men were kicked off a plane of American Airlines. One of them, Emmanuel Jean Joseph, obeyed the order, and immediately realized what was happening: “I grabbed my things and walked to the front of the plane. There were seven other black men. And it was like: ‘Okay, what’s happening here'”.

What happened, according to what he and two other expelled passengers who have sued the company say, is that they had to leave the cabin because a white flight attendant complained about bad body odor inside the cabin. The thing is that they only told them to go down. “I started to go crazy and took out my cell phone to record everything,” says Xavier Veal, another of the plaintiffs, in the video that heads these lines.

They were sitting in different parts of the plane, they didn’t even know each other and They were the only black passengers of the flight. They made them leave and promised to put them on another flight to New York, but after an hour of waiting, they had to return to the same plane because there was no availability.

Now Emmanuel, Xavier and Jackson They have sued the company for what they consider to be a denigrating episode of racism and discrimination. For its part, American Airlines has said that they are investigating what happened and that the plaintiffs’ claims do not reflect the company’s values.