August 31, 2022 • 39 mins
Desmond was convicted after refusing to leave her seat in a segregated movie theater in Nova Scotia in 1946. But she also established the first beauty salon for Black women her area, and founded a beauty school for Black women.
Research:
- Bingham, Russell. "Viola Desmond". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 16 April 2021, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/viola-desmond. Accessed 09 August 2022.
- Bishop, Henry V. “Viola (Davis) Desmond (b. 1914 — d. 1965): Stand For Justice.” Nova Scotia Archives. https://archives.novascotia.ca/desmond/background/
- Canadian Museum for Human Rights. “One woman’s resistance: Viola Desmond's Story.” https://humanrights.ca/story/one-womans-resistance
- Flynn, Karen. “Remembering Viola Desmond.” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. 11/2021. https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/remembering-viola-desmond?language_content_entity=en
- "Fred Christie Case (Christie v York)". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 06 June 2020, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/fred-christie-case. Accessed 12 August 2022.
- Henry, Natasha. "Racial Segregation of Black People in Canada". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 08 September 2021, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/racial-segregation-of-black-people-in-canada. Accessed 10 August 2022.
- Parks Canada. “Viola Desmond National Historic Person (1914-1965).” https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/culture/clmhc-hsmbc/res/information-backgrounder/Viola_Desmond
- Reynolds, Graham and Wanda Robson. “Viola Desmond: Her Life and Times.” Roseway Publishing. 2018.
- Robson, Wanda. “Sister to courage : stories from the world of Viola Desmond, Canada's Rosa Parks.” Wreck Cove, N.S. : Breton Books. 2010.
- The Halifax Chronicle. “Dismisses Desmond Application.” 5/19/1947. page 14. Via Nova Scotia Archives. https://archives.novascotia.ca/desmond/archives/?ID=28
- "Viola Desmond." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 2022. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631009722/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=1380ef8c. Accessed 8 Aug. 2022.
- Walker, Barrington. “The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays.” Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2012.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We have
had a lot of requests over the years for an
episode on Viola Desmond, who was jailed and tried and
(00:24):
convicted after refusing to leave her seat in a segregated
movie theater in Glasgow, Nova, Scotia. In that's probably what
she's the most known for today, thanks in part to
the efforts of her younger sister, Wanda Robson, which started
a little over twenty years ago. But Viola Desmond was
also an entrepreneur. She was inspired by the story of
(00:47):
Madam C. J. Walker to start her own business. She
established the first beauty salon for black women in her area,
and she founded a school to train other black women
to do the same. So she's one of those people
where her life a lot of times gets summarized as
this one moment that there's a whole other story. Viola
Irene Davis was born in Halifax on July six. Her father,
(01:12):
James Albert Davis, held several jobs over the years, including
working as a barber, a stevedore and eventually a car dealer.
Her mother, Gwendolen Irene Johnson Davis, was the daughter of
a Baptist minister. A lot of sources described this as
an interracial marriage because Gwendolen's mother was white and her
father had what's described as a small amount of African ancestry.
(01:37):
In the words of Viola's sister, Wanda, quote, while Mum
considered herself colored, moms certainly looked white. Yeah, there are
various papers I read about about Viola Desmond that talk
about how this would have affected their family. Um, it
doesn't come up a lot though, and her sister's writing
about the family. So it's hard is how how much
(02:00):
of that is speculative and how much effects there like
actual lived experience. In addition to Viola and Wanda, James
and Gwendolen had thirteen other children, nine of whom survived childhood.
The older children helped with the younger ones, and since
Viola was the youngest of the four older girls, she
took a big interest in her younger siblings care and education.
(02:23):
And this was especially true as her older sisters got
married and left the house. Uh, there's some gender divide here.
But also the family was mostly girls, a lot of
girls in the family. This family did struggle at times,
especially during the Great Depression, but Wanda Robson describes their
home as one where you could just feel the love,
(02:45):
and their parents made sure that the children never felt deprived.
We really don't have a lot of personal detail or
reflections about Viola's life. She did not leave any journals
or letters, but we do know a few things thanks
to her sister's writing. The family was devoutly religious. Since
Gwendolen had been raised Baptist, she often went to Baptist services,
(03:08):
and James was Anglican. They didn't seem to be concerned
about which churches their children joined as they grew up,
as long as they went to church, and Viola and
her siblings ultimately joined four different denominations. Viola herself received
confirmation at Trinity Anglican Church. The Davis's were also a
(03:29):
respected part of the black community in Halifax and were
active in church and community organizations. At this point, the
Halifax area had two primarily black neighborhoods. One was in
the North end of Halifax itself, and the other was Africville,
which was on the outskirts of the city. In many ways,
both of these communities were thriving. They were socially very
(03:51):
close knit. They were home to black owned businesses and
community groups, but they were also the targets of racism
and discrimination. One reason, then, the black population was clustered
into just these two areas, is that many property deeds
for other parts of the city came along with racially
restrictive covenants, and he specified that the property could only
(04:12):
be sold to a white buyer. Africaville, in particular, was
also excluded from a lot of basic city services like
clean water, a sewage system, and trash collection, even though
its residents were paying city taxes. The Davis has lived
in the North End, and when Viola was three years old,
their neighborhood was devastated by the Halifax Explosion. This explosion
(04:37):
took place when two ships collided in Halifax Harbor on
December six, nineteen. More than seventeen hundred people died, and
the explosion was particularly destructive and deadly in the Richmond
neighborhood of Halifax's North End and the Megama community of
Turtle Grove just across the Harbor. The Davis has lived
(04:58):
just a few blocks back from the water, and the
explosion shattered the windows of their home as well as
causing other damage. Viola was in her high chair at
the time in a window blind fell over her from
the blown out window. For a moment, her family was
afraid that she had been killed. When Viola started elementary school,
(05:19):
it was that one of the only integrated schools in
Nova Scotia at the time. Public schools all over Canada
were often segregated by race, although only Nova Scotia and
Ontario had segregation laws on the books. These laws were
written in such a way that they allowed for segregated schools,
but once they were in place, white officials often used
(05:41):
them as a justification to force black children to attend
separate schools. Outside the scope of this podcast, Canada also
had a system of residential schools for Indigenous students, which
we talked about on the show before. These separated Indigenous
children from their families and their communities and forced them
to assimilate with white culture and an active cultural genocide.
(06:04):
Viola's grandfather had been part of a successful effort to
integrate some of the public schools in Halifax that started
in eighteen seventy six. This opened up the possibility for
black students to attend high school since there were no
segregated high schools for black children in Halifax, but Viola
and her siblings still experienced racism within those integrated schools.
(06:28):
For example, Viola's sister Wanda, recalled an incident in which
Viola and their mother confronted her Grade two teacher, who
required black children to sit in the back of the
room but invited the students who made the highest test
scores to sit in the front row. Wanda had the
top score of the whole class, and her teacher had
tried to move her Integrade three rather than allowing her
(06:52):
to sit in the front. Yeah, this wasn't a reward.
It was a Wanda is clearly smarter than all the
rest of us, We're going to move her into like
in a very sarcastic way. It's an infuriating story. Um
Viola earned her high school diploma in two and after
that she became a teacher. Teaching. Colleges wouldn't admit black
(07:14):
students in Nova Scotia, so black teachers qualified by taking
an exam. After she passed her exam, Viola taught for
a couple of years that segregated schools for black children,
which was the only place that black teachers were allowed
to teach. She didn't want to be a teacher forever, though.
She had read an article about beauty entrepreneur and philanthropist
(07:35):
Madam C. J. Walker and was really inspired by her example.
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Louisiana
in eighteen sixty seven. She was the first child in
her family to be born into freedom after the end
of the U s Civil War. She took the name
Madam C. J. Walker after marrying Charles James Walker, using
(07:57):
Madam to give her line of beauty and hair products
a more refined and luxurious name. She also established schools
of beauty culture and trained thousands of black people in
skills like hair care, beauty, in the treatment of scalp conditions.
She's credited as the first woman in the US to
become a self made millionaire. Viola wanted to do something
(08:20):
similar in Nova Scotia, where there were no beauty schools
that accepted black women, and there were also no beauty
salons in Halifax that would take black women as customers,
although there were some barbershops for black men. One was
owned by Jack Desmond, who became a barber after an
on the job injury put an end to his career
in construction. Jack opened his shop in nineteen thirty two
(08:45):
and he and Viola started dating just before she went
to Montreal to study at Field Beauty Culture School. This
was one of the few beauty schools in Canada that
accepted black students. She started studying there in four and
he would travel to Montreal by train to visit her.
They got married in ninety six, and once Viola got
(09:07):
back to Halifax, they were both active in church and
community organizations. In n seven, Viola opened Viz Studio of
Beauty Culture next to her husband's barbershop, and she immediately
developed a dedicated group of clients, some of them traveling
from other parts of Canada to see her. Her salon
(09:27):
also became a social hub for the neighborhood. People described
her as charismatic, optimistic, kind, and deeply devoted to her family.
She was also independent and ambitious, and soon she wanted
to continue her training, and we will get into that
after we paused for a sponsor break. Viola Desmond's first
(09:57):
stop in Continuing her education was at Apex College in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she trained under Sarah Spencer Washington.
Sarah Spencer Washington, Madam C. J. Walker, and any Turnbow
Malone are regarded as three of the primary founders of
the black beauty culture industry in North America. All three
(10:17):
women started their own salons, developed their own beauty and
hygiene products, and established their own schools to train other people,
especially other Black women, to support themselves and bolster their
communities by establishing their own beauty businesses. This work was
connected to the idea of racial uplift. That's an idea
(10:38):
originally put forth by figures like W. E. B. Du
Boys and Booker T. Washington that the black race could
improve its own circumstances from within through things like education, culture,
and racial pride. The philosophy of racial uplift and its
legacy are complicated. This was rooted in the idea of respectability,
(10:59):
and it also had connections to eugenics, including the idea
that the most educated, intelligent black people, or the talented
tenth should act as guides and leaders for the rest.
It also made black people responsible for dismantling white people's racism,
and there were proponents of racial uplift and others who
(11:20):
criticized the black beauty culture industry, interpreting that industry as
reinforcing beauty standards that replicated what was considered attractive in
white people. Some of that perception stems from misinformation, though,
for example, Madam C. J. Walker is wrongly credited with
inventing the hot comb that was really invented by French
(11:42):
hairdresser Marcel Gratta in the eighteen seventies. Some of the
most popular skin lightning creams and hair straighteners of this
era were marketed to black consumers, but they were actually
developed and sold by white people, including Dr Fred Palmer,
who was a white pharmac this who developed a skin
whitener that contained mercury, and a hairdresser that was described
(12:06):
as softening hair and straightening kinks. At the same time,
lighter skin was generally seen as more attractive than dark skin,
and colorism was and of course continues to be widespread.
And it's also true that many of the hairstyles these
women developed and taught others to do involved straightening people's hair.
(12:26):
But the women who founded the black beauty culture industry
really didn't interpret what they were doing as a replication
of white beauty standards. Instead, it was a chance to
help black women bring out their own beauty and to
look good and feel good about themselves and see to
the unique needs of black people's skin and hair. For generations,
(12:47):
white people had tried to rob Black women of their
agency over their own bodies through the institution of slavery,
and the beauty industry offered a way to reclaim that agency.
Many also saw beauty culture as an act of resistance
against racism, basically showing white people that Black women were
ladies too. So to return to Viola Desmond. In addition
(13:10):
to learning more about things like hairdressing and the treatment
of scalp conditions, she also learned chemistry and the basics
of wig making while at APEX. When she got back
to Halifax in y she really wanted to learn more
about wig making. She enjoyed it and she was good
at it, and she also worked with clients who wanted
access to everything from small hairpieces to full custom made wigs.
(13:36):
So she went back to the US again, this time
for a wig making apprenticeship in New York City. According
to Wanda Robson, their mother was so worried about Viola's
safety in New York that she sewed her money into
her bra before she left. Once Desmond finished her apprenticeship,
she went back to Halifax and moved her salon to
(13:57):
a larger space, one where she could set up wefting
loom for making wigs. It also had space where she
could mix and package her line of skin and hair
care products. She sold these under the name Cepia by
Viola Desmond, and they included hair glosses, oils, and palm aids,
as well as face powders and lipsticks designed for people
(14:17):
with darker skin. She described her face powder as having
a nut brown color and one that was quote especially
blended to enhance dark complexions. In four she opened the
Desmond School of Beauty Culture, which had five students in
its first graduating class. The program expanded over the next
(14:38):
two years, growing to about fifteen students at a time,
and then these students would go on to establish their
own beauty salons and employ other black women at those salons,
and Desmond's business was a big success. She earned enough
money to buy her own car, which was not common
at all for black women at the time. She used
(14:59):
this to travel all over Nova Scotia to teach classes,
sell her products, and make deliveries, often traveling by herself
to do so. As she traveled, her experiences with racism
and segregation could really vary from one place to another.
While there were some laws on the books in Nova
Scotia that related to race in some way, including the
(15:20):
school segregation law that we talked about earlier, when it
came to public accommodations like movie theaters, hotels, and restaurants,
there was no law requiring segregation, but there was no
law forbidding discrimination based on race either. There were, however,
several court decisions that allowed discrimination by private businesses. The
(15:44):
most famous is known as the Christie case. On July
eleven six, Fred Christie and Emil King were refused service
at the York Tavern in the Forum in Montreal because
Christie was black. Christie filed suit, and his lawyer Are
argued that York Taverns liquor license meant it had a
duty to serve all customers regardless of race. The first
(16:08):
court that they appeared before agreed with this, but then
on appeal a higher court ruled that quote a merchant
or trader is free to carry on his business in
the manner that he conceives to be best for that business.
Christie appealed that decision, and the Supreme Court of Canada
ruled that freedom of commerce outweighed customers right not to
(16:31):
be discriminated against. So businesses in Canada had the right
to discriminate against customers, but whether they actually did so
could really vary. We have already talked about barbershops and
beauty salons, beyond that, some restaurants served black customers while
others did not. Some hotels rented rooms to black people
(16:53):
but not others. Some movie theaters had integrated seating, while
others required black people to sit together they're in a
specific section. This could also really vary from city to city,
and from one business to another within a city, and
it could change from one owner or manager to another.
On November eight, n Viola Desmond was traveling through New Glasgow,
(17:17):
Nova Scotia on her way to Sydney, Nova Scotia, when
her car broke down. She was able to get to
a mechanic, but the repair was going to take some time,
so she got a hotel room and she decided to
go see a movie at the Roseland Theater. She didn't
go to the movies very often, but she had time
she did not have anything else to do. The movie
(17:38):
playing was Dark Mirror, starring Olivia to have aland whose
performances Desmond had enjoyed in movies that she had seen.
Because she was not local, Desmond didn't know that the
Roseland Theater segregated its seating by race. White customers sat
downstairs while black customers sat upstairs in the balcony. This
(17:59):
had been the case for years in some black high
school students had been removed from the theater for trying
to sit downstairs. New Glasgow resident Carrie Best heard about
this and wrote and spoke to the owner, Norman W. Mason,
trying to get him to reverse the policy, but he refused,
so she and her son went to the theater and
(18:21):
tried to get a seat on the main floor, and
when they were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace,
she filed a lawsuit. Much like in the Fred Christie case,
the court ruled that the owner had the right to
refuse service to anyone, So five years later, Viola Desmond
went to the ticket counter at the same theater and
asked for a downstairs ticket. The ticket seller, Peggy Mellinson,
(18:45):
gave her some change and a ticket for the balcony.
Desmond had no reason to think she had been given
anything other than what she had asked for, and she
tried to go downstairs, but when she handed her ticket
to the ticket taker, Prima Davis, and then tried to
go inside, David told her she had a balcony ticket.
Desmond thought this was just a mistake, and she went
(19:08):
back to the counter to correct it, and Melanson told her, quote,
I'm not allowed to sell downstairs tickets to you people.
It was clear to Desmond what Melonson meant by this,
and she decided to sit on the main level of
the theater anyway, ignoring Davis's attempt to stop her. Soon,
the manager, Henry McNeil approached Desmond and told her to
(19:30):
move to the balcony. Desmond pointed out that she had
asked for a main floor ticket and that when she
realized she had one for the balcony, she had tried
to exchange it. She said she needed to sit downstairs
because she could not see well from the balcony, and
pointed out that there were plenty of available seats. McNeil
told her that the theater had the right to segregate
(19:51):
its seating and that if she did not leave, he
would call the police. When an officer arrived, he told
Desmond that if she didn't leave, he would throw her
to the theater, based on an affidavit she filed in
support of her appeal. Desmond didn't believe he would do
this obviously, she knew racism and discrimination existed. She had
(20:11):
experienced some overt racism while studying in the United States.
She had heard the experiences of her clients at the salon,
one of whom was actually carry best. The idea that
an officer might physically remove her from the theater when
she had done nothing wrong didn't really enter her mind.
She stayed where she was. When she refused to move,
(20:35):
the officer grabbed her and dragged her into the lobby.
She struggled against him, trying to grab onto the door
frame as she was pulled past it, and she lost
her purse and one of her shoes in the process.
Someone handed her lost shoe and her purse to her,
and then the officer and the theater manager carried her
out to the street. Where she was put into a
(20:57):
taxi that took her to the town jail. She was
put in a cell and kept there overnight, where she
was too terrified to sleep. Viola Desmond was put on
trial the very next morning, which we will get to
you after a sponsor break. On the morning of November nine,
(21:23):
barely twelve hours after she was forcibly taken out of
the Roseland theater, Viola Desmond was put on trial. The
downstairs ticket at the theater cost forty cents, including a
three cent amusement tax, but the upstairs ticket was thirty cents,
including a two cent amusement tax, so she was charged
(21:45):
with trying to defraud the provincial government of the one
cent difference in that tax. The tax was required at
movie theaters under Nova Scotia's nineteen fifteen Theaters, Cinematographs and
Amusements Act, although it was the theater, not the law,
that had set different prices for upstairs and downstairs tickets.
(22:08):
This was a private prosecution, with the theater manager bringing
the charges. The only legal official present at the trial
was the magistrate, Roderick McKay. It wasn't standard procedure at
the time to inform people of their rights, and Desmond
was not told that she had the right to legal
counsel or the right to have the trial postponed until
(22:30):
she had actually consulted with a lawyer. No one explained
what was happening or what was expected of her. A
series of witnesses was called, including the cashier, the ticket taker,
and the theater manager, and after each of them was questioned,
Desmond was asked if she had any questions. She had
(22:51):
no idea she was being asked if she wanted to
cross examine these witnesses. She thought she was just being
asked if she had understood what they had said. She
did understand, so she said she had no questions. When
Desmond took the stand herself, she pointed out that she
had tried to buy the more expensive ticket, including the
(23:12):
additional tax, she had not been trying to evade paying it,
but she wasn't given the opportunity to enter any evidence herself,
or even told that that was something she could do.
Desmond was found guilty and find twenty dollars plus court costs,
With those six dollars and costs going to the theater manager.
(23:33):
Nobody mentioned Race during these proceedings, but it was clear
that the real issue was not a tax. It was
her refusal to sit where the black patrons were expected
to sit, but that tax was the only thing they
could prosecute her for. When Viola Desmond was released and
her car was ready, she abandoned the rest of her
business trip and went back home. Her husband had grown
(23:57):
up in New Glasgow and when she told him what
had happened, and he was unsurprised. She saw a doctor
about her injuries and he told her she should talk
to a lawyer. He also wrote letters about the incident
on her behalf to various government officials. Desmond's friends and
family were divided about what she should do. Some, including
(24:19):
her husband, thought it was best to just let it go.
Her friends, per Lene and the Reverend William Oliver, who
had helped found the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, encouraged her to appeal, and the n
s a a CP raised money for it. Carry Best,
who at this point had become a journalist and a
(24:40):
human rights activist, covered Desmond's arrest and trial and appeal
process in the newspaper The Clarion, which Best had helped
found Sometimes. The Clarion is described as the first newspaper
in Nova Scotia with a black editor and publisher, but
at least one earlier paper, The Atlantic Advocate, was in print.
From nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen. Only a handful of
(25:03):
black lawyers were practicing in Nova Scotia, and Desmond chose
a white lawyer named Frederick William Bissit. First, he filed
suit against Harry McNeil in the Theater on the grounds
that Desmond had been assaulted, maliciously prosecuted, and falsely arrested
and imprisoned, but for unknown reasons, this suit never made
(25:24):
it to trial. In December of nineteen forty six, Visit
applied for a writ of cirtiary before Nova Scotia Supreme
Court Justice Maynard Brown Archibald, asking him to quash Desmond's conviction.
In Canada, a writ of cercary usually comes into play
when a traditional appeal isn't an option for some reason,
(25:46):
or when there's just an obvious error that was made
in a lower court. Visit argued that the magistrate had
not had jurisdiction to convict Desmond. It is not clear
why Bisit chose to pursue this course rather than appeal
through the lower courts. The deadline for an appeal had passed.
It had to be done within ten days of the conviction.
(26:09):
He had issued a writ in the civil suit just
five days after the conviction, so it doesn't seem like
he was just taking too long. It's possible that the
appeal deadline passed before it became clear that the civil
case wasn't coming to trial. Regardless, Archibald decided against Desmond
on January twentieth, ninety seven, saying that the proper procedure
(26:31):
would have been an appeal, and that since the magistrate
did have jurisdiction, a sortiary process was not available to her.
Bessett tried again, this time taking the matter to the
full Nova Scotia Supreme Court. The four justices each expressed
differing opinions on why, but they all agreed that the
(26:52):
case should be dismissed, and that decision was announced on
May seventeenth seven. It was clear to it some of
the justices that this case really wasn't about a theater tax,
although there were virtually no references to race in the
written record. In his concurring opinion, Justice W. L. Hall wrote, quote,
(27:13):
One wonders if the manager of the theater who laid
the complaint was so zealous because of a bona fide
belief that there had been an attempt to defraud the
Province of Nova Scotia of the sum of one cent
or was it a surreptitious endeavor to enforce a Jim
Crow rule by misuse of a public statute. Desmond's case
(27:33):
had been widely covered in newspapers in Canada and parts
of the United States, and this whole process had put
a lot of strain on her and her family. People
continued to disagree about whether she should have pursued the case,
with some feeling like she had drawn unwanted attention to
the black community in Nova Scotia. Others instead questioned why
(27:57):
Bissett had not tried to make an equal right argument
that could have been applied more broadly. Desmond, of course,
was deeply disappointed in this outcome. Her marriage had already
been strained. Viola was a lot more ambitious than Jack was,
and he was increasingly uncomfortable with and frustrated by all
(28:17):
her travel and time away from home. But he was
also strongly opposed to her decision to go to court.
He thought it would stir up trouble and that she
should handle it herself through prayer. Sometime after the final
court ruling, they separated. Viola gave up her plans to
establish beauty franchises all over Canada and started focusing on
(28:39):
real estate, buying and fixing up homes to rent them
to black families. Eventually, Desmond closed her business and moved
first to go to business school in Montreal and then
to go to New York City to become an entertainment agent.
She made ends meet as she got started in this
business by working as a cigarette girl at Small Paradise
(28:59):
Club and Arleam, which is also where she had worked
her way through her wig making apprenticeship. In nineteen fifty four,
which was the year Desmond moved to Montreal, Nova Scotia
repealed its legislation that allowed segregation in public schools, although
the last segregated school in Nova Scotia did not close
until nineteen eighty three. In nineteen fifty nine, Nova Scotia
(29:22):
passed the Fair Accommodation Act, which prohibited discrimination in places
like movie theaters and restaurants. Other civil rights legislation had
already been passed in other parts of Canada, and additional
laws followed as black people in Canada advocated for equal rights.
Although racism and discrimination continued, Many people in the North
(29:44):
End neighborhood, where Desmond had spent most of her life
were forced out of their homes or otherwise displaced during
urban renewal projects in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and
starting in nineteen sixty four, Africville was systematically destroyed. Viola
does Men died on February seventh, nineteen sixty five, at
the age of fifty. Her cause of death was reported
(30:06):
as an intestinal bleed. Although her death seemed really sudden,
members of her family had noticed that she seemed unwell
when she returned to Halifax following the death of her
mother in nineteen sixty three and of her father in
nineteen sixty four. In two thousand, the National Film Board
of Canada produced a documentary called Journey to Justice, which
(30:28):
was focused on black people who had taken civil rights
cases to court from the nineteen thirties through the nineteen fifties,
including Viola Desmond. That same year, Viola's sister, Wanda Robson,
audited a course called the History of Race Relations in
North America at what is now Cape Breton University. The
professor Dr Graham Reynolds mentioned Viola Desmond during class, at
(30:52):
which point Wanda Robson said, that's my sister. I love that.
I mean, I hate that it's something their whole fan
only had to go through, but I love that. She
was just sitting in class and was like, that's my sister.
Robson decided to return to college and finish her bachelor's
degree at the age of seventy three, graduating in two
thousand four, and she started pursuing a formal apology for
(31:16):
her sister. She also wrote a book about their family,
including talking about her sister and her sister's experience at
the Roseland Theater. She called that book Sister to Courage,
and that came out in Desmond wound up getting more
than an apology. On April fift Lieutenant Governor Mayn Francis
issued a Royal Prerogative of Mercy a k A. A
(31:38):
free pardon for Viola Desmond. This took place at a
ceremony in Halifax, and Nova Scotia Premier Daryl Dexter issued
a formal apology as well. A portrait of Desmond was
unveiled a few months later and was installed in the
Government House ballroom. The same year all of this was happening,
the Viola Desmond Chair of Social Justice was established at
(32:01):
Cape Breton University. Had Desmond lived to see this, she
would have been nine. In Viola Desmond appeared on a
Canadian postage stamp. An exhibition on her life and experiences
opened at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in ten.
In sixteen, it was announced that Viola Desmond would appear
(32:21):
on Canadian currency. The ten dollar note bearing her image
was released on November eighteen. The book Viola Desmond, Her
Life and Times was published in twenty eighteen as well.
This was a collaboration between Dr Graham Reynolds and Wander Robson,
and then also in twenty eighteen, Desmond was named a
(32:42):
National Historic Person in Canada and became the subject of
a Google doodle. In February of one, the government repaid
Viola Desmond's fine to her sister Wanda. Adjusted for inflation,
that was one thousand dollars, which Robson used to fund
a scholarship at Cape In University. Wanda Robson died in
(33:03):
February of two at the age of Sometimes Viola Desmond
is described as the Canadian Rosa Parks, often with the
note that Rosa Parks should really be called the United
States Viola Desmond, since Desmond refused to leave her seat
at the movie theater nine years before, Parks refused to
leave her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus, and
(33:26):
these two women do have a lot of things in common.
They both made an in the moment decision to push
back against racism by not leaving their seat. They were
both also petite and well dressed, churchgoing women who were
very well respected in their communities, which is one of
the reasons why Rosa Parks was asked to be a
plaintiff in a test case to try to overturn segregation
(33:49):
laws in the United States. But this comparison really flattens
both women's experiences down to just one moment of refusing
to leave a seat, when they both had full lives
of very different accomplishments outside of that moment and it's aftermath. Also,
it erases the experiences of people who also refused to
(34:09):
give up their seat before either Desmond or Parks, including
Carrie Best, who we talked about in this episode, and
Elizabeth Jennings Graham, who we will have as an upcoming
Saturday classic. Yeah, sometimes referred to as nineteenth century Rosa
Parks similarly kind of a limited comparison as we talked
about in that episode, but we'll be in folks as feeds.
(34:32):
Do you have a listener mail? I do? This is
from Brianna or possibly Brianna. Uh did not get a
chance to write back and ask, but uh, this email
begainst Dear Holly and Tracy. I've been meaning to write
this email for a while now, so that what I
originally was going to write has turned into a couple
(34:53):
of things. I'm entering my fifth year in a PhD
program setting medieval literature, and it's been a rough year
with the pandemic hangover my students and I have been experiencing,
and also that whole business of having to write a dissertation.
How do you even do that? Anyway? For both Unearthed episodes,
I used the episodes as motivation to finish a project,
(35:15):
so I just wanted to say thank you for those episodes.
I'm an archaeology nerd and I always look forward to them.
They're a good motivator to get things done. I hope
Tracy's last negative experience putting the episodes together didn't sour
her on the experience completely. I also wanted to especially
say thanks for including the paper on the medieval hand grenade.
(35:35):
I kept waiting for one of you to make a
Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke when you were
talking about it. I included that paper in a footnote
in my chapter about alchemy because the substances they found
in the hand grenade are also substances used by alchemists.
I don't suggest that the particular object the writers identified
as a hand grenade was actually an alchemical vessel. It
(35:57):
seems to be the wrong shape, but it seems logical
to me that some of those vessels may have been
used for that purpose. I did make a Monty Python joke,
and the footnote hopefully gets to stay in I also
wanted to share a pie recipe that's popular in my family.
Piemaking is kind of a tradition in my family, and
it's something we take very seriously. I have vivid memories
(36:18):
of the back counter and my grandma's kitchen being covered
with six or eight pies on holidays, and my aunt
and cousin have both worked in food service and their
pies are famous in our area of Montana. When I
worked at their restaurant one day, this lady who wasn't
from the area flagged me down and asked me about
the pies. She said, kind of like she had caught me.
Are your pies holemade? I said yes, and she added
(36:41):
even the crust, and I said yes, ma'am, everything is
always homemade. I'm including the recipe for Amish cream pie.
No idea where the name came from. I don't think
there's an Amish pedigree to it. This one is really
popular and will barely last twenty four hours when it's
on sale. I wish I could make you one and
ship it your way, but pies travel very well. And
you said you're moving offices. So again, thanks for the
(37:03):
Unearthed episodes and for the podcasts, Brianna uh and so
we will stick this pie recipe on our social media.
It's very easy, though, because you just mixed together three
quarters cup of sugar, two and a half cups of
half and half, a quarter teaspoon of salt, three and
a half tablespoons of cornstarch heaping or packed and cook
(37:24):
that until thick, and then add in half a cup
of brown sugar, half a cup of butter, and a
tea spoon of vanilla that goes into a pie shehell
sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at three fifty for fifteen or
twenty minutes until it's bubbly around the edge, and then
you let it cool off, store in the fridge. That
sounds really delicious. I went down a little rabbit hole
about whether it may or may not be Amish in origin.
(37:47):
There are a whole lot of Amish pies um, this
specific one did not find a reference to. I know
there are some foods that are described as Amish that
have nothing to do uh with Amish people at all.
And just kind of got it fixed with that moniker
um because of feelings, basically, So I thought about whether
(38:10):
to put a holy hand grenade joke uh in the
Unearthed episode we talked about the medieval hand grenade, and
I wound up not doing it. So I'm glad I
got a chance to just read this email well where
it is in there. I kept thinking about that scene
and money Python and the Holy Grail as I was
reading that part of the unearthed stuff. UM never fear.
(38:31):
That whole experience did not sour me on doing Unearthed.
It was really what was going on in the world
in that moment that made it a frustrating Unearthed process,
not the Unearthed thing itself. I think regardless of what
I had been working on, it would have been challenging
given the amount of chaos that was currently happening at
(38:52):
that moment. Uh. Speaking of chaos, we've also gotten a
few tweets from people who point out that the word
meaning chaos in Italian is pronounced cows approximately. Um. I
didn't get to that in my frantic cramming of Italian
on duo lingo before we went to Italy, So thanks
(39:14):
to folks who have tweeted about that. If you would
like to send us a note about this or any
other podcast where at History podcast that I Heart radio
dot com. We're all over social media at Missed in History,
which is where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
And you can't subscribe to our show on the I
Heart Radio app or wherever else you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
(39:41):
production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts from i
Heeart Radio, Visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We have
had a lot of requests over the years for an
episode on Viola Desmond, who was jailed and tried and
(00:24):
convicted after refusing to leave her seat in a segregated
movie theater in Glasgow, Nova, Scotia. In that's probably what
she's the most known for today, thanks in part to
the efforts of her younger sister, Wanda Robson, which started
a little over twenty years ago. But Viola Desmond was
also an entrepreneur. She was inspired by the story of
(00:47):
Madam C. J. Walker to start her own business. She
established the first beauty salon for black women in her area,
and she founded a school to train other black women
to do the same. So she's one of those people
where her life a lot of times gets summarized as
this one moment that there's a whole other story. Viola
Irene Davis was born in Halifax on July six. Her father,
(01:12):
James Albert Davis, held several jobs over the years, including
working as a barber, a stevedore and eventually a car dealer.
Her mother, Gwendolen Irene Johnson Davis, was the daughter of
a Baptist minister. A lot of sources described this as
an interracial marriage because Gwendolen's mother was white and her
father had what's described as a small amount of African ancestry.
(01:37):
In the words of Viola's sister, Wanda, quote, while Mum
considered herself colored, moms certainly looked white. Yeah, there are
various papers I read about about Viola Desmond that talk
about how this would have affected their family. Um, it
doesn't come up a lot though, and her sister's writing
about the family. So it's hard is how how much
(02:00):
of that is speculative and how much effects there like
actual lived experience. In addition to Viola and Wanda, James
and Gwendolen had thirteen other children, nine of whom survived childhood.
The older children helped with the younger ones, and since
Viola was the youngest of the four older girls, she
took a big interest in her younger siblings care and education.
(02:23):
And this was especially true as her older sisters got
married and left the house. Uh, there's some gender divide here.
But also the family was mostly girls, a lot of
girls in the family. This family did struggle at times,
especially during the Great Depression, but Wanda Robson describes their
home as one where you could just feel the love,
(02:45):
and their parents made sure that the children never felt deprived.
We really don't have a lot of personal detail or
reflections about Viola's life. She did not leave any journals
or letters, but we do know a few things thanks
to her sister's writing. The family was devoutly religious. Since
Gwendolen had been raised Baptist, she often went to Baptist services,
(03:08):
and James was Anglican. They didn't seem to be concerned
about which churches their children joined as they grew up,
as long as they went to church, and Viola and
her siblings ultimately joined four different denominations. Viola herself received
confirmation at Trinity Anglican Church. The Davis's were also a
(03:29):
respected part of the black community in Halifax and were
active in church and community organizations. At this point, the
Halifax area had two primarily black neighborhoods. One was in
the North end of Halifax itself, and the other was Africville,
which was on the outskirts of the city. In many ways,
both of these communities were thriving. They were socially very
(03:51):
close knit. They were home to black owned businesses and
community groups, but they were also the targets of racism
and discrimination. One reason, then, the black population was clustered
into just these two areas, is that many property deeds
for other parts of the city came along with racially
restrictive covenants, and he specified that the property could only
(04:12):
be sold to a white buyer. Africaville, in particular, was
also excluded from a lot of basic city services like
clean water, a sewage system, and trash collection, even though
its residents were paying city taxes. The Davis has lived
in the North End, and when Viola was three years old,
their neighborhood was devastated by the Halifax Explosion. This explosion
(04:37):
took place when two ships collided in Halifax Harbor on
December six, nineteen. More than seventeen hundred people died, and
the explosion was particularly destructive and deadly in the Richmond
neighborhood of Halifax's North End and the Megama community of
Turtle Grove just across the Harbor. The Davis has lived
(04:58):
just a few blocks back from the water, and the
explosion shattered the windows of their home as well as
causing other damage. Viola was in her high chair at
the time in a window blind fell over her from
the blown out window. For a moment, her family was
afraid that she had been killed. When Viola started elementary school,
(05:19):
it was that one of the only integrated schools in
Nova Scotia at the time. Public schools all over Canada
were often segregated by race, although only Nova Scotia and
Ontario had segregation laws on the books. These laws were
written in such a way that they allowed for segregated schools,
but once they were in place, white officials often used
(05:41):
them as a justification to force black children to attend
separate schools. Outside the scope of this podcast, Canada also
had a system of residential schools for Indigenous students, which
we talked about on the show before. These separated Indigenous
children from their families and their communities and forced them
to assimilate with white culture and an active cultural genocide.
(06:04):
Viola's grandfather had been part of a successful effort to
integrate some of the public schools in Halifax that started
in eighteen seventy six. This opened up the possibility for
black students to attend high school since there were no
segregated high schools for black children in Halifax, but Viola
and her siblings still experienced racism within those integrated schools.
(06:28):
For example, Viola's sister Wanda, recalled an incident in which
Viola and their mother confronted her Grade two teacher, who
required black children to sit in the back of the
room but invited the students who made the highest test
scores to sit in the front row. Wanda had the
top score of the whole class, and her teacher had
tried to move her Integrade three rather than allowing her
(06:52):
to sit in the front. Yeah, this wasn't a reward.
It was a Wanda is clearly smarter than all the
rest of us, We're going to move her into like
in a very sarcastic way. It's an infuriating story. Um
Viola earned her high school diploma in two and after
that she became a teacher. Teaching. Colleges wouldn't admit black
(07:14):
students in Nova Scotia, so black teachers qualified by taking
an exam. After she passed her exam, Viola taught for
a couple of years that segregated schools for black children,
which was the only place that black teachers were allowed
to teach. She didn't want to be a teacher forever, though.
She had read an article about beauty entrepreneur and philanthropist
(07:35):
Madam C. J. Walker and was really inspired by her example.
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Louisiana
in eighteen sixty seven. She was the first child in
her family to be born into freedom after the end
of the U s Civil War. She took the name
Madam C. J. Walker after marrying Charles James Walker, using
(07:57):
Madam to give her line of beauty and hair products
a more refined and luxurious name. She also established schools
of beauty culture and trained thousands of black people in
skills like hair care, beauty, in the treatment of scalp conditions.
She's credited as the first woman in the US to
become a self made millionaire. Viola wanted to do something
(08:20):
similar in Nova Scotia, where there were no beauty schools
that accepted black women, and there were also no beauty
salons in Halifax that would take black women as customers,
although there were some barbershops for black men. One was
owned by Jack Desmond, who became a barber after an
on the job injury put an end to his career
in construction. Jack opened his shop in nineteen thirty two
(08:45):
and he and Viola started dating just before she went
to Montreal to study at Field Beauty Culture School. This
was one of the few beauty schools in Canada that
accepted black students. She started studying there in four and
he would travel to Montreal by train to visit her.
They got married in ninety six, and once Viola got
(09:07):
back to Halifax, they were both active in church and
community organizations. In n seven, Viola opened Viz Studio of
Beauty Culture next to her husband's barbershop, and she immediately
developed a dedicated group of clients, some of them traveling
from other parts of Canada to see her. Her salon
(09:27):
also became a social hub for the neighborhood. People described
her as charismatic, optimistic, kind, and deeply devoted to her family.
She was also independent and ambitious, and soon she wanted
to continue her training, and we will get into that
after we paused for a sponsor break. Viola Desmond's first
(09:57):
stop in Continuing her education was at Apex College in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she trained under Sarah Spencer Washington.
Sarah Spencer Washington, Madam C. J. Walker, and any Turnbow
Malone are regarded as three of the primary founders of
the black beauty culture industry in North America. All three
(10:17):
women started their own salons, developed their own beauty and
hygiene products, and established their own schools to train other people,
especially other Black women, to support themselves and bolster their
communities by establishing their own beauty businesses. This work was
connected to the idea of racial uplift. That's an idea
(10:38):
originally put forth by figures like W. E. B. Du
Boys and Booker T. Washington that the black race could
improve its own circumstances from within through things like education, culture,
and racial pride. The philosophy of racial uplift and its
legacy are complicated. This was rooted in the idea of respectability,
(10:59):
and it also had connections to eugenics, including the idea
that the most educated, intelligent black people, or the talented
tenth should act as guides and leaders for the rest.
It also made black people responsible for dismantling white people's racism,
and there were proponents of racial uplift and others who
(11:20):
criticized the black beauty culture industry, interpreting that industry as
reinforcing beauty standards that replicated what was considered attractive in
white people. Some of that perception stems from misinformation, though,
for example, Madam C. J. Walker is wrongly credited with
inventing the hot comb that was really invented by French
(11:42):
hairdresser Marcel Gratta in the eighteen seventies. Some of the
most popular skin lightning creams and hair straighteners of this
era were marketed to black consumers, but they were actually
developed and sold by white people, including Dr Fred Palmer,
who was a white pharmac this who developed a skin
whitener that contained mercury, and a hairdresser that was described
(12:06):
as softening hair and straightening kinks. At the same time,
lighter skin was generally seen as more attractive than dark skin,
and colorism was and of course continues to be widespread.
And it's also true that many of the hairstyles these
women developed and taught others to do involved straightening people's hair.
(12:26):
But the women who founded the black beauty culture industry
really didn't interpret what they were doing as a replication
of white beauty standards. Instead, it was a chance to
help black women bring out their own beauty and to
look good and feel good about themselves and see to
the unique needs of black people's skin and hair. For generations,
(12:47):
white people had tried to rob Black women of their
agency over their own bodies through the institution of slavery,
and the beauty industry offered a way to reclaim that agency.
Many also saw beauty culture as an act of resistance
against racism, basically showing white people that Black women were
ladies too. So to return to Viola Desmond. In addition
(13:10):
to learning more about things like hairdressing and the treatment
of scalp conditions, she also learned chemistry and the basics
of wig making while at APEX. When she got back
to Halifax in y she really wanted to learn more
about wig making. She enjoyed it and she was good
at it, and she also worked with clients who wanted
access to everything from small hairpieces to full custom made wigs.
(13:36):
So she went back to the US again, this time
for a wig making apprenticeship in New York City. According
to Wanda Robson, their mother was so worried about Viola's
safety in New York that she sewed her money into
her bra before she left. Once Desmond finished her apprenticeship,
she went back to Halifax and moved her salon to
(13:57):
a larger space, one where she could set up wefting
loom for making wigs. It also had space where she
could mix and package her line of skin and hair
care products. She sold these under the name Cepia by
Viola Desmond, and they included hair glosses, oils, and palm aids,
as well as face powders and lipsticks designed for people
(14:17):
with darker skin. She described her face powder as having
a nut brown color and one that was quote especially
blended to enhance dark complexions. In four she opened the
Desmond School of Beauty Culture, which had five students in
its first graduating class. The program expanded over the next
(14:38):
two years, growing to about fifteen students at a time,
and then these students would go on to establish their
own beauty salons and employ other black women at those salons,
and Desmond's business was a big success. She earned enough
money to buy her own car, which was not common
at all for black women at the time. She used
(14:59):
this to travel all over Nova Scotia to teach classes,
sell her products, and make deliveries, often traveling by herself
to do so. As she traveled, her experiences with racism
and segregation could really vary from one place to another.
While there were some laws on the books in Nova
Scotia that related to race in some way, including the
(15:20):
school segregation law that we talked about earlier, when it
came to public accommodations like movie theaters, hotels, and restaurants,
there was no law requiring segregation, but there was no
law forbidding discrimination based on race either. There were, however,
several court decisions that allowed discrimination by private businesses. The
(15:44):
most famous is known as the Christie case. On July
eleven six, Fred Christie and Emil King were refused service
at the York Tavern in the Forum in Montreal because
Christie was black. Christie filed suit, and his lawyer Are
argued that York Taverns liquor license meant it had a
duty to serve all customers regardless of race. The first
(16:08):
court that they appeared before agreed with this, but then
on appeal a higher court ruled that quote a merchant
or trader is free to carry on his business in
the manner that he conceives to be best for that business.
Christie appealed that decision, and the Supreme Court of Canada
ruled that freedom of commerce outweighed customers right not to
(16:31):
be discriminated against. So businesses in Canada had the right
to discriminate against customers, but whether they actually did so
could really vary. We have already talked about barbershops and
beauty salons, beyond that, some restaurants served black customers while
others did not. Some hotels rented rooms to black people
(16:53):
but not others. Some movie theaters had integrated seating, while
others required black people to sit together they're in a
specific section. This could also really vary from city to city,
and from one business to another within a city, and
it could change from one owner or manager to another.
On November eight, n Viola Desmond was traveling through New Glasgow,
(17:17):
Nova Scotia on her way to Sydney, Nova Scotia, when
her car broke down. She was able to get to
a mechanic, but the repair was going to take some time,
so she got a hotel room and she decided to
go see a movie at the Roseland Theater. She didn't
go to the movies very often, but she had time
she did not have anything else to do. The movie
(17:38):
playing was Dark Mirror, starring Olivia to have aland whose
performances Desmond had enjoyed in movies that she had seen.
Because she was not local, Desmond didn't know that the
Roseland Theater segregated its seating by race. White customers sat
downstairs while black customers sat upstairs in the balcony. This
(17:59):
had been the case for years in some black high
school students had been removed from the theater for trying
to sit downstairs. New Glasgow resident Carrie Best heard about
this and wrote and spoke to the owner, Norman W. Mason,
trying to get him to reverse the policy, but he refused,
so she and her son went to the theater and
(18:21):
tried to get a seat on the main floor, and
when they were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace,
she filed a lawsuit. Much like in the Fred Christie case,
the court ruled that the owner had the right to
refuse service to anyone, So five years later, Viola Desmond
went to the ticket counter at the same theater and
asked for a downstairs ticket. The ticket seller, Peggy Mellinson,
(18:45):
gave her some change and a ticket for the balcony.
Desmond had no reason to think she had been given
anything other than what she had asked for, and she
tried to go downstairs, but when she handed her ticket
to the ticket taker, Prima Davis, and then tried to
go inside, David told her she had a balcony ticket.
Desmond thought this was just a mistake, and she went
(19:08):
back to the counter to correct it, and Melanson told her, quote,
I'm not allowed to sell downstairs tickets to you people.
It was clear to Desmond what Melonson meant by this,
and she decided to sit on the main level of
the theater anyway, ignoring Davis's attempt to stop her. Soon,
the manager, Henry McNeil approached Desmond and told her to
(19:30):
move to the balcony. Desmond pointed out that she had
asked for a main floor ticket and that when she
realized she had one for the balcony, she had tried
to exchange it. She said she needed to sit downstairs
because she could not see well from the balcony, and
pointed out that there were plenty of available seats. McNeil
told her that the theater had the right to segregate
(19:51):
its seating and that if she did not leave, he
would call the police. When an officer arrived, he told
Desmond that if she didn't leave, he would throw her
to the theater, based on an affidavit she filed in
support of her appeal. Desmond didn't believe he would do
this obviously, she knew racism and discrimination existed. She had
(20:11):
experienced some overt racism while studying in the United States.
She had heard the experiences of her clients at the salon,
one of whom was actually carry best. The idea that
an officer might physically remove her from the theater when
she had done nothing wrong didn't really enter her mind.
She stayed where she was. When she refused to move,
(20:35):
the officer grabbed her and dragged her into the lobby.
She struggled against him, trying to grab onto the door
frame as she was pulled past it, and she lost
her purse and one of her shoes in the process.
Someone handed her lost shoe and her purse to her,
and then the officer and the theater manager carried her
out to the street. Where she was put into a
(20:57):
taxi that took her to the town jail. She was
put in a cell and kept there overnight, where she
was too terrified to sleep. Viola Desmond was put on
trial the very next morning, which we will get to
you after a sponsor break. On the morning of November nine,
(21:23):
barely twelve hours after she was forcibly taken out of
the Roseland theater, Viola Desmond was put on trial. The
downstairs ticket at the theater cost forty cents, including a
three cent amusement tax, but the upstairs ticket was thirty cents,
including a two cent amusement tax, so she was charged
(21:45):
with trying to defraud the provincial government of the one
cent difference in that tax. The tax was required at
movie theaters under Nova Scotia's nineteen fifteen Theaters, Cinematographs and
Amusements Act, although it was the theater, not the law,
that had set different prices for upstairs and downstairs tickets.
(22:08):
This was a private prosecution, with the theater manager bringing
the charges. The only legal official present at the trial
was the magistrate, Roderick McKay. It wasn't standard procedure at
the time to inform people of their rights, and Desmond
was not told that she had the right to legal
counsel or the right to have the trial postponed until
(22:30):
she had actually consulted with a lawyer. No one explained
what was happening or what was expected of her. A
series of witnesses was called, including the cashier, the ticket taker,
and the theater manager, and after each of them was questioned,
Desmond was asked if she had any questions. She had
(22:51):
no idea she was being asked if she wanted to
cross examine these witnesses. She thought she was just being
asked if she had understood what they had said. She
did understand, so she said she had no questions. When
Desmond took the stand herself, she pointed out that she
had tried to buy the more expensive ticket, including the
(23:12):
additional tax, she had not been trying to evade paying it,
but she wasn't given the opportunity to enter any evidence herself,
or even told that that was something she could do.
Desmond was found guilty and find twenty dollars plus court costs,
With those six dollars and costs going to the theater manager.
(23:33):
Nobody mentioned Race during these proceedings, but it was clear
that the real issue was not a tax. It was
her refusal to sit where the black patrons were expected
to sit, but that tax was the only thing they
could prosecute her for. When Viola Desmond was released and
her car was ready, she abandoned the rest of her
business trip and went back home. Her husband had grown
(23:57):
up in New Glasgow and when she told him what
had happened, and he was unsurprised. She saw a doctor
about her injuries and he told her she should talk
to a lawyer. He also wrote letters about the incident
on her behalf to various government officials. Desmond's friends and
family were divided about what she should do. Some, including
(24:19):
her husband, thought it was best to just let it go.
Her friends, per Lene and the Reverend William Oliver, who
had helped found the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, encouraged her to appeal, and the n
s a a CP raised money for it. Carry Best,
who at this point had become a journalist and a
(24:40):
human rights activist, covered Desmond's arrest and trial and appeal
process in the newspaper The Clarion, which Best had helped
found Sometimes. The Clarion is described as the first newspaper
in Nova Scotia with a black editor and publisher, but
at least one earlier paper, The Atlantic Advocate, was in print.
From nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen. Only a handful of
(25:03):
black lawyers were practicing in Nova Scotia, and Desmond chose
a white lawyer named Frederick William Bissit. First, he filed
suit against Harry McNeil in the Theater on the grounds
that Desmond had been assaulted, maliciously prosecuted, and falsely arrested
and imprisoned, but for unknown reasons, this suit never made
(25:24):
it to trial. In December of nineteen forty six, Visit
applied for a writ of cirtiary before Nova Scotia Supreme
Court Justice Maynard Brown Archibald, asking him to quash Desmond's conviction.
In Canada, a writ of cercary usually comes into play
when a traditional appeal isn't an option for some reason,
(25:46):
or when there's just an obvious error that was made
in a lower court. Visit argued that the magistrate had
not had jurisdiction to convict Desmond. It is not clear
why Bisit chose to pursue this course rather than appeal
through the lower courts. The deadline for an appeal had passed.
It had to be done within ten days of the conviction.
(26:09):
He had issued a writ in the civil suit just
five days after the conviction, so it doesn't seem like
he was just taking too long. It's possible that the
appeal deadline passed before it became clear that the civil
case wasn't coming to trial. Regardless, Archibald decided against Desmond
on January twentieth, ninety seven, saying that the proper procedure
(26:31):
would have been an appeal, and that since the magistrate
did have jurisdiction, a sortiary process was not available to her.
Bessett tried again, this time taking the matter to the
full Nova Scotia Supreme Court. The four justices each expressed
differing opinions on why, but they all agreed that the
(26:52):
case should be dismissed, and that decision was announced on
May seventeenth seven. It was clear to it some of
the justices that this case really wasn't about a theater tax,
although there were virtually no references to race in the
written record. In his concurring opinion, Justice W. L. Hall wrote, quote,
(27:13):
One wonders if the manager of the theater who laid
the complaint was so zealous because of a bona fide
belief that there had been an attempt to defraud the
Province of Nova Scotia of the sum of one cent
or was it a surreptitious endeavor to enforce a Jim
Crow rule by misuse of a public statute. Desmond's case
(27:33):
had been widely covered in newspapers in Canada and parts
of the United States, and this whole process had put
a lot of strain on her and her family. People
continued to disagree about whether she should have pursued the case,
with some feeling like she had drawn unwanted attention to
the black community in Nova Scotia. Others instead questioned why
(27:57):
Bissett had not tried to make an equal right argument
that could have been applied more broadly. Desmond, of course,
was deeply disappointed in this outcome. Her marriage had already
been strained. Viola was a lot more ambitious than Jack was,
and he was increasingly uncomfortable with and frustrated by all
(28:17):
her travel and time away from home. But he was
also strongly opposed to her decision to go to court.
He thought it would stir up trouble and that she
should handle it herself through prayer. Sometime after the final
court ruling, they separated. Viola gave up her plans to
establish beauty franchises all over Canada and started focusing on
(28:39):
real estate, buying and fixing up homes to rent them
to black families. Eventually, Desmond closed her business and moved
first to go to business school in Montreal and then
to go to New York City to become an entertainment agent.
She made ends meet as she got started in this
business by working as a cigarette girl at Small Paradise
(28:59):
Club and Arleam, which is also where she had worked
her way through her wig making apprenticeship. In nineteen fifty four,
which was the year Desmond moved to Montreal, Nova Scotia
repealed its legislation that allowed segregation in public schools, although
the last segregated school in Nova Scotia did not close
until nineteen eighty three. In nineteen fifty nine, Nova Scotia
(29:22):
passed the Fair Accommodation Act, which prohibited discrimination in places
like movie theaters and restaurants. Other civil rights legislation had
already been passed in other parts of Canada, and additional
laws followed as black people in Canada advocated for equal rights.
Although racism and discrimination continued, Many people in the North
(29:44):
End neighborhood, where Desmond had spent most of her life
were forced out of their homes or otherwise displaced during
urban renewal projects in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and
starting in nineteen sixty four, Africville was systematically destroyed. Viola
does Men died on February seventh, nineteen sixty five, at
the age of fifty. Her cause of death was reported
(30:06):
as an intestinal bleed. Although her death seemed really sudden,
members of her family had noticed that she seemed unwell
when she returned to Halifax following the death of her
mother in nineteen sixty three and of her father in
nineteen sixty four. In two thousand, the National Film Board
of Canada produced a documentary called Journey to Justice, which
(30:28):
was focused on black people who had taken civil rights
cases to court from the nineteen thirties through the nineteen fifties,
including Viola Desmond. That same year, Viola's sister, Wanda Robson,
audited a course called the History of Race Relations in
North America at what is now Cape Breton University. The
professor Dr Graham Reynolds mentioned Viola Desmond during class, at
(30:52):
which point Wanda Robson said, that's my sister. I love that.
I mean, I hate that it's something their whole fan
only had to go through, but I love that. She
was just sitting in class and was like, that's my sister.
Robson decided to return to college and finish her bachelor's
degree at the age of seventy three, graduating in two
thousand four, and she started pursuing a formal apology for
(31:16):
her sister. She also wrote a book about their family,
including talking about her sister and her sister's experience at
the Roseland Theater. She called that book Sister to Courage,
and that came out in Desmond wound up getting more
than an apology. On April fift Lieutenant Governor Mayn Francis
issued a Royal Prerogative of Mercy a k A. A
(31:38):
free pardon for Viola Desmond. This took place at a
ceremony in Halifax, and Nova Scotia Premier Daryl Dexter issued
a formal apology as well. A portrait of Desmond was
unveiled a few months later and was installed in the
Government House ballroom. The same year all of this was happening,
the Viola Desmond Chair of Social Justice was established at
(32:01):
Cape Breton University. Had Desmond lived to see this, she
would have been nine. In Viola Desmond appeared on a
Canadian postage stamp. An exhibition on her life and experiences
opened at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in ten.
In sixteen, it was announced that Viola Desmond would appear
(32:21):
on Canadian currency. The ten dollar note bearing her image
was released on November eighteen. The book Viola Desmond, Her
Life and Times was published in twenty eighteen as well.
This was a collaboration between Dr Graham Reynolds and Wander Robson,
and then also in twenty eighteen, Desmond was named a
(32:42):
National Historic Person in Canada and became the subject of
a Google doodle. In February of one, the government repaid
Viola Desmond's fine to her sister Wanda. Adjusted for inflation,
that was one thousand dollars, which Robson used to fund
a scholarship at Cape In University. Wanda Robson died in
(33:03):
February of two at the age of Sometimes Viola Desmond
is described as the Canadian Rosa Parks, often with the
note that Rosa Parks should really be called the United
States Viola Desmond, since Desmond refused to leave her seat
at the movie theater nine years before, Parks refused to
leave her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus, and
(33:26):
these two women do have a lot of things in common.
They both made an in the moment decision to push
back against racism by not leaving their seat. They were
both also petite and well dressed, churchgoing women who were
very well respected in their communities, which is one of
the reasons why Rosa Parks was asked to be a
plaintiff in a test case to try to overturn segregation
(33:49):
laws in the United States. But this comparison really flattens
both women's experiences down to just one moment of refusing
to leave a seat, when they both had full lives
of very different accomplishments outside of that moment and it's aftermath. Also,
it erases the experiences of people who also refused to
(34:09):
give up their seat before either Desmond or Parks, including
Carrie Best, who we talked about in this episode, and
Elizabeth Jennings Graham, who we will have as an upcoming
Saturday classic. Yeah, sometimes referred to as nineteenth century Rosa
Parks similarly kind of a limited comparison as we talked
about in that episode, but we'll be in folks as feeds.
(34:32):
Do you have a listener mail? I do? This is
from Brianna or possibly Brianna. Uh did not get a
chance to write back and ask, but uh, this email
begainst Dear Holly and Tracy. I've been meaning to write
this email for a while now, so that what I
originally was going to write has turned into a couple
(34:53):
of things. I'm entering my fifth year in a PhD
program setting medieval literature, and it's been a rough year
with the pandemic hangover my students and I have been experiencing,
and also that whole business of having to write a dissertation.
How do you even do that? Anyway? For both Unearthed episodes,
I used the episodes as motivation to finish a project,
(35:15):
so I just wanted to say thank you for those episodes.
I'm an archaeology nerd and I always look forward to them.
They're a good motivator to get things done. I hope
Tracy's last negative experience putting the episodes together didn't sour
her on the experience completely. I also wanted to especially
say thanks for including the paper on the medieval hand grenade.
(35:35):
I kept waiting for one of you to make a
Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke when you were
talking about it. I included that paper in a footnote
in my chapter about alchemy because the substances they found
in the hand grenade are also substances used by alchemists.
I don't suggest that the particular object the writers identified
as a hand grenade was actually an alchemical vessel. It
(35:57):
seems to be the wrong shape, but it seems logical
to me that some of those vessels may have been
used for that purpose. I did make a Monty Python joke,
and the footnote hopefully gets to stay in I also
wanted to share a pie recipe that's popular in my family.
Piemaking is kind of a tradition in my family, and
it's something we take very seriously. I have vivid memories
(36:18):
of the back counter and my grandma's kitchen being covered
with six or eight pies on holidays, and my aunt
and cousin have both worked in food service and their
pies are famous in our area of Montana. When I
worked at their restaurant one day, this lady who wasn't
from the area flagged me down and asked me about
the pies. She said, kind of like she had caught me.
Are your pies holemade? I said yes, and she added
(36:41):
even the crust, and I said yes, ma'am, everything is
always homemade. I'm including the recipe for Amish cream pie.
No idea where the name came from. I don't think
there's an Amish pedigree to it. This one is really
popular and will barely last twenty four hours when it's
on sale. I wish I could make you one and
ship it your way, but pies travel very well. And
you said you're moving offices. So again, thanks for the
(37:03):
Unearthed episodes and for the podcasts, Brianna uh and so
we will stick this pie recipe on our social media.
It's very easy, though, because you just mixed together three
quarters cup of sugar, two and a half cups of
half and half, a quarter teaspoon of salt, three and
a half tablespoons of cornstarch heaping or packed and cook
(37:24):
that until thick, and then add in half a cup
of brown sugar, half a cup of butter, and a
tea spoon of vanilla that goes into a pie shehell
sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at three fifty for fifteen or
twenty minutes until it's bubbly around the edge, and then
you let it cool off, store in the fridge. That
sounds really delicious. I went down a little rabbit hole
about whether it may or may not be Amish in origin.
(37:47):
There are a whole lot of Amish pies um, this
specific one did not find a reference to. I know
there are some foods that are described as Amish that
have nothing to do uh with Amish people at all.
And just kind of got it fixed with that moniker
um because of feelings, basically, So I thought about whether
(38:10):
to put a holy hand grenade joke uh in the
Unearthed episode we talked about the medieval hand grenade, and
I wound up not doing it. So I'm glad I
got a chance to just read this email well where
it is in there. I kept thinking about that scene
and money Python and the Holy Grail as I was
reading that part of the unearthed stuff. UM never fear.
(38:31):
That whole experience did not sour me on doing Unearthed.
It was really what was going on in the world
in that moment that made it a frustrating Unearthed process,
not the Unearthed thing itself. I think regardless of what
I had been working on, it would have been challenging
given the amount of chaos that was currently happening at
(38:52):
that moment. Uh. Speaking of chaos, we've also gotten a
few tweets from people who point out that the word
meaning chaos in Italian is pronounced cows approximately. Um. I
didn't get to that in my frantic cramming of Italian
on duo lingo before we went to Italy, So thanks
(39:14):
to folks who have tweeted about that. If you would
like to send us a note about this or any
other podcast where at History podcast that I Heart radio
dot com. We're all over social media at Missed in History,
which is where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
And you can't subscribe to our show on the I
Heart Radio app or wherever else you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
(39:41):
production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts from i
Heeart Radio, Visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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