Viola Desmond was a woman who ran a
beauty shop in Halifax. She was about in her
early 30s and in 1940s Nova Scotia
overt segregation wasn't enforced by the
law but there was some
separation of the races. There were
certainly places that blacks knew they
weren't always welcome, and in fact,
Desmond, in order to certify, had to go to
beauty school in Montreal because no
school in Nova Scotia would accept
her. In 1946 she was actually on a
business trip out of Halifax and her car
broke down in a smaller town called
New Glasgow. While she had to stay
overnight to wait for repairs she
decided to take in a movie. What she
didn't realize, was that the local rule,
was that blacks had to sit in the balcony. She bought a ticket, was sold a ticket for
the balcony, proceeded to sit in the
regular section of the theatre because
she wasn't aware that there was a
difference and was quite incensed, and I
think understandably, when theatre
management asked her to
move to the balcony. She refused,
and in really the same way that Rosa
Parks became famous year a few years
later in the States for refusing to give
her seat up to a white person on a bus, I
think Desmond just figured she'd
had enough of this kind of
discrimination and refused to leave,
feeling that she was justified to stay
there, and ended up actually being
arrested and taken away by the police
and held in jail overnight. What she
was charged with, the offense, it seems
unbelievable to modern eyes, the offense
was evading one cent in tax which would
have been the difference between a
balcony and lower bowl ticket in this
theatre. So it was really a trumped up
charge. She was arraigned the next day and
convicted of the charge, and after that
her case really became a cause. The black
community in Nova Scotia really had enough of this and this became a way to
fight this undercurrent of Jim Crow laws
that did persist in places in Nova
Scotia, in Canada at the time. Her case
got national attention -- Saturday Night
magazine, The Globe and Mail--and it drew attention to this lingering vestige of
sort of official segregation in Canada.
Viola Desmond didn't set out to become a
shining beacon for equality, or a
crusader against racism or segregation,
but her case really did stand for all of
that and that's why she really
deserves to be remembered and honored
today.
