Viola Davis Desmond

Viola Davis Desmond (1914-1965), Canadian entrepreneur and activist. Viola Irene Davis was born in Halifax, the largest city in the province of Nova Scotia. Part of a prominent middle-class family, her grandfather had been a barber and her father operated a real estate agency and car dealership. After high school, Davis taught in Halifax’s segregated schools while saving money to open her own beauty parlor. Because the local beauty schools did not admit blacks, she studied at the Field Beauty Culture School in Montreal and the Apex College of Beauty Culture and Hairdressing in New Jersey. In 1937 Desmond opened Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture, which became one of the most important businesses in Halifax’s black community. One resident later recalled that she “took all of us kids from this area under her wing, and was like a mother to us all.” She studied chemistry and began selling her own hair care products, selling them throughout Nova Scotia to black women who were denied service by white hairdressers. Canada had no laws requiring racial segregation, but there were no laws banning it either, and so most businesses chose to segregate or reject black customers. She also opened the Desmond School of Beauty Culture, making plans to establish franchises operated by her graduates.

In 1946 her car broke down in the town of New Glasgow, and while it was being repaired she went to the local movie theater. The employees required her to purchase a balcony ticket, stating “I’m not permitted to sell downstairs tickets to you people.” She sat on the ground floor anyway and refused to move until the police forcibly removed her, causing knee and hip injuries. She was then further humiliated by being placed in a cell with male prisoners, but she put on her white gloves and sat upright for more than twelve hours. Because Canada had no laws that either required or banned racial segregation, so Desmond was instead tried for tax evasion: the tax on ground floor tickets at the theater cost one cent more than the tax on the balcony tickets. The local magistrate insisted that the matter had nothing to do with race and found Desmond guilty, fining her $26 dollars. She appealed the case to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, telling one reporter “I didn’t realize a thing like this could happen in Nova Scotia – or any other part of Canada.” Although one judge argued that her arrest may have been a “surreptitious endeavour to enforce a Jim Crow rule by misuse of a public statute,” it affirmed her conviction because of an error by her attorney.

The case helped inspire other black Canadians to press for civil rights laws, which finally passed in the 1960s. It also, however, took a heavy toll on Desmond. Her sister later wrote “A person like my sister, who was such a hard worker, had always been told if you do hard work, you’re going to win…She felt that she should have won the case, and she was bitterly disappointed.” Her marriage ended, and she closed her businesses in Halifax and moved to Montreal. She later relocated to New York, hoping to work as a consultant for the entertainment industry, and died there suddenly of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at the age of fifty. In 2010, the government of Nova Scotia granted Desmond a formal apology and posthumous pardon, the first in Canadian history; it was signed by the lieutenant governor, who was also the first black and the second woman to hold that post. Her sister declared “What happened to my sister is part of our history, and needs to remain intact…We must learn from our history so we do not repeat it. If my parents were here today, it would warm their hearts to see Viola recognized as a true Canadian hero.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.