blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in the

[evanovitch]

40s for sitting in a whites only section of a movie theatre...also charged wid tax evasion as the ticket price for whites was one cent less than for blacks...

dis happened in Nova Scotia where, if u memba u history, the rebellious slaves from Jamaica were shipped bak in the days

at any rate har 80+ ole sista attended the ceremony

[jah_yout]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

a suh di beast operate...you will know them by their acts...

f**# your pardon...

how about not killing her in the first place

[evanovitch]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

dem did kill har...mi know she died in the 60s but mi neva hear mention dat dem did kill har....

[jah_yout]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

they may not have wielded the physical weapon (i don't know that they did)...
but surely they set her death in motion with their evil unjust blood-sucking tactics...

we will never forget

[diabolical_Tanya]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in the





Even when she was imprisoned, Viola Desmond was coiffed and groomed, with white gloves upon her petite hands and an upright posture despite the circumstance.

On Nov. 8, 1946, Ms. Desmond, a black beautician and businesswoman, was jailed after being dragged from a Nova Scotia theatre by two white men because she refused to move from the main floor to the balcony, the designated area for blacks.

For her indignation, Ms. Desmond -- today an icon of this country's civil rights movement and known as Canada's Rosa Parks -- was convicted of an obscure tax offence by a white judge in New Glasgow.

Today, Ms. Desmond, who passed away in 1965 in New York, will be pardoned by Nova Scotia Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis at a ceremony in Halifax, and Canada will be reminded of its egregious errors.

The free pardon recognizes Ms. Desmond's innocence at the Roseland Theatre that night, and it recognizes the error of the four white Supreme Court judges who turned down her appeal.

But although the pardon is hailed as an overdue gesture, some members of Ms. Desmond's family say if she were alive today, the former teacher and entrepreneur would want nothing of the sort.

"She would have laughed and said, ‘Pardon me for what? I didn't do anything wrong,'" said Sharon Oliver, Ms. Desmond's niece, who says her own elderly mother and two of Ms. Desmond's other sisters are angered by the pardon.

A fourth sister who lives in Halifax, Wanda Robson, supports the pardon and has worked in recent years to educate schoolchildren about Ms. Desmond's unwitting role as a civil rights pioneer.

Indeed, most Canadians know little, if anything, about the woman.

"Every year I ask my graduate students, ‘Who has heard of Viola Desmond?' And only a sprinkling of hands go up," said Constance Backhouse, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and author of Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada. "Everybody knows about Rosa Parks and the history of racism in the United States, but it seems that nobody wants to own up to the racist history here in Canada."

Ms. Backhouse, who poured through court documents and interviewed some of Ms. Desmond's beauty-parlour clients for her book, said she hopes that today's event will usher a remembrance not only of Ms. Desmond, but also of segregation in this country.

"Canadians like to pretend that we are a raceless country, as if it's impolite to mention race or racism," Ms. Backhouse said, pointing to Nova Scotia's Africville, the White Women's Labour Law, and the Chinese head tax as examples of Canada's marred history. "And yet we have such a legacy of racism that runs very, very deep."

It was into this climate of segregation that Ms. Desmond was born, on July 6, 1914. She grew up at 4 Prince William Street in Halifax, with her siblings Gordon, John, Alan, Emily, Eugenie, Helen, Constance, Olive, and Wanda.

Among her sisters, she was known as the ‘groomer.' But after journeying to Montreal to attend the Field Beauty Culture School -- one of the few in Canada that accepted black students -- and then launching her own product line and opening a beauty school, she was also known as the entrepreneur.

"Aunt Vi never saw herself as a civil rights activist, she saw herself as a businesswoman," Ms. Oliver said. "She was trying to prove that black women could be attractive and successful too."

Ms. Oliver grew up in Montreal and saw her aunt often, sharing her room when Ms. Desmond visited or passed through on business, the latter considered an anomaly for a married black woman at the time.

Ms. Oliver said Ms. Desmond never spoke of the Roseland Theatre, and said she remembers just one conversation that seemed rooted in her aunt's iconic place in history.

"She showed up one time with brilliantly blonde hair, and I told her that coloured people can't have blonde hair," Ms. Oliver said. "Then she said, ‘If you allow people to dictate what you can and can't do, then you will never reach your dreams.'"

It was this independence that caught the attention of Ms. Desmond's late husband, Jack, a construction worker turned barber-shop owner. He courted Ms. Desmond before she left for beauty school in Montreal and then, after a few visits, he married her there.

After a stint at a New York beauty school, Ms. Desmond returned to Halifax and launched ‘Vi's Studio of Beauty Culture' next to ‘Jack's Barber Shop.'

"Her beauty clients saw her as a beacon of hope in the black community," Ms. Backhouse said. "She truly believed that if a black person worked hard enough, they could overcome the barriers. Sadly, I think the night in the Rosedale Theatre showed her that it didn't matter that she was a respectable entrepreneur."

After losing her Supreme Court appeal -- her white lawyer was paid for by the local black community, though the lawyer remitted his pay to the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People -- Ms. Desmond "lost heart," Ms. Backhouse said.

"She, like many people who challenge race discrimination, paid an enormous personal price," Ms. Backhouse said, adding that she supports the swelling movement to declare Nov. 8 as Viola Desmond Day. "I think it's only right that we remind Canadians not only about who she was, but why her actions were even necessary."

National Post

With files from Richard Foot, Canwest News Service

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/...#ixzz0lDh7l23l

[diabolical_Tanya]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in the

Viola Desmond was a successful beautician and business woman from Halifax, Nova Scotia. On November 8, 1946, after attending a movie at the Roseland theatre in New Glasgow she was arrested for choosing to sit in the "white section" of the segregated theatre rather than the balcony where blacks were made to sit.


She was jailed for twelve hours and then eventually charged with "attempting to defraud the Canadian government." The charged stemmed from her refusal to pay the one cent amusement tax which meant that a ticket for blacks cost three cents instead of the two cents that white customers paid. Desmond refused to pay more than white customers for the same movie. After a trial, she was sentenced to pay a $20 fine and spend thirty days in prison. Her case brought attention to the "Jim Crow" like laws that condoned racism in Canada, at the time.


Viola Desmond's story is important. I think that too often we believe the myth that Canada is a multicultural utopia, in comparison to the United States. In many ways, it is a tolerant society but every country has its flaws. Why should we hide them? Why don't we educate more people about Viola Desmond and the Civil Rights Movement in Canada. Yes, there was a civil rights movement in Canada!


In the US, they celebrate Rosa Parks and her story. Where is Viola Desmond's celebration?


(Information on Viola Desmond sourced from http://www.bccns.com/viola.htm, Photo courtesy: transgriot.blogspot.com) http://womanofcolour.blogspot.com/20...osa-parks.html

[jah_yout]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">&quot;She would have laughed and said, ‘<span style="font-weight: bold">Pardon me for what? I didn't do anything wrong,</span>'&quot; said Sharon Oliver, Ms. Desmond's niece, who says her own elderly mother and two of Ms. Desmond's other sisters are angered by the pardon.
</div></div>


a juss more fire pon di beast ...
R&gt;I&gt;P

[ackeepod]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

Rosa Parks is the Viola Desmond of Canada being that she was arrested in 1945 0r 46 AND mS pARKS WAS IN DI 60'S.
aNYHOO....
the pardon was exchanged for an apology and a proposal has been put forth to have a Viola Desmond day in November ..Noverber 8 , I think

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

A pardon is not the same as being exonorated.
Only the guilty can be pardoned.
If the authorities pardoned her,it confirms her guilt but forgave Herod her indescretions.

Now if she was exonerated and recird expunged now.

That would be some level of advancement.

[halfwaytree]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">A pardon is not the same as being exonorated.
Only the guilty can be pardoned.
If the authorities pardoned her,it confirms her guilt but forgave Herod her indescretions.

Now if she was exonerated and recird expunged now.

That would be some level of advancement. </div></div>


<span style="color: #FF0000">The article posted in this thread does not tell the entire story. She was arrested and found guilty of a crime. The police (wanting to make an example of her) found a technicality to screw her over.</span>

Viola Desmond was a successful 32-year-old Halifax entrepreneur when her car broke down in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She decided to go to a movie at the Roseland Theatre while the car was being fixed.

It was November 8, 1946, and she was about to make history.

Desmond requested a ticket for the main floor of the theatre, paid for it, went in and sat down.

Although it was not posted anywhere to see, the theatre’s policy was that persons of colour had to sit in the balcony.

When ordered to move, Desmond replied that she couldn’t see from the balcony, that she had paid to sit on the main floor, and that she would stay there. The manager ran out of the theatre and got a policeman. Together, the two men carried Viola Desmond into the street, injuring her knee and hip in the process.

She spent that night in the town jail. No one informed her of her rights, she was not allowed parole, and she was incarcerated in the same jail block as male prisoners. Determined to maintain her dignity, she sat bolt upright, wearing her white gloves, for the entire night.

In the morning – without representation, without understanding that she could question the witnesses against her, without even having been told that she could have a lawyer – <span style="font-weight: bold">she was tried and found guilty: tax evasion.
<span style="font-size: 20pt">
She had not paid the extra one cent tax</span> on a ticket for a seat on the main floor of the theatre. She had paid for a less expensive seat in the balcony. That she had requested the floor seat, that she had no way to know that Blacks were restricted to the balcony, that she believed she had paid for the ticket on the first floor, that she offered to pay the difference, that she had been assaulted, injured, held then tried in irregular and perhaps illegal ways – it made no difference.</span>

The sentence: 30 days in jail or a fine of $20, plus $6 to the manager of the theatre – one of the two men who had carried her out so roughly. She paid.

The doctor who treated her injuries recommended that Desmond get a lawyer. After discussing her arrest and trial with friends, she decided to challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. In its decision, although one of the four judges, Justice Hall, referred in passing to the race issue, he agreed with the other three judges that no error in law had occurred in the original trial. <span style="font-weight: bold">The court unanimously upheld the verdict. The conviction stood.</span>

The unspoken, unacknowledged truth: Viola Desmond was found guilty of being a Black person who had stepped out of her assigned place in society.

This resounding defeat in the courts left her discouraged. Her marriage – already strained by her business success – did not survive the trial. Desmond’s husband thought she was making a fuss over a matter that didn’t warrant it.

She did have significant supporters. And her stand had helped to build something much bigger.

The Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP) – aided by Viola’s friends, newspaper publisher Carrie Best and activist Pearleen Oliver – campaigned to raise money. After the appeal, her lawyer, Frederick Bissett – a white man from Halifax – donated his fees back to the NSAACP.

With these funds, the fight Viola had started could continue. Vigorous further action by Best, Oliver, community members, and the NSAACP led finally to the repeal of segregation policies in Nova Scotia in 1954 – more than a year before Rosa Parks’s action in Montgomery, Alabama, helped bring the civil rights movement in the U.S. into sharp media focus.

Viola Desmond grew up in a prosperous family in Halifax. She decided early to be a hairdresser, one of the few professions open to an ambitious, independent-minded black woman. Unable to gain admission to a hairdressing school in Nova Scotia, she trained in Montreal, New York and Atlantic City.

Back in Halifax, Viola married and opened her first salon, where she specialized in hair styles and treatments tailored for her community. Beauty shops had become a major social gathering place in the 1930s, soon after salons first appeared. After a few years in business, she founded a school to train other beauticians. Her dream was to open a chain of salons across Canada – salons staffed by people she trained, specializing in Black women’s hair.

After the trial, Viola gave up her salon and her ambition of a chain of salons across the country. She went to Montreal to business school, then moved to New York to set up a new business, this time as an agent for performers. Very shortly after she arrived in New York, Viola Desmond died.

She was fifty.

Link

[Peasie]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

Thanks for bringing out Viola Desmond's story. I learned something very valuable here.

[jah_yout]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

well i say she committed no &quot;crime&quot;...
i and i don't cater for men's unjust &quot;laws&quot;...

i say they shove their <span style="font-weight: bold">pardon</span> up their ---

[halfwaytree]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">well i say she committed no &quot;crime&quot;...
i and i don't cater for men's unjust &quot;laws&quot;...

i say they shove their <span style="font-weight: bold">pardon</span> up their --- </div></div>

I agree! Just goes to show how far those in power will go to drag others down!

[Peasie]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

Know what? I agree with you, jy . And Doc said it as well

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">well i say she committed no &quot;crime&quot;...
i and i don't cater for men's unjust &quot;laws&quot;...

i say they shove their <span style="font-weight: bold">pardon</span> up their --- </div></div>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd with Peasies's edits </div><div class="ubbcode-body">A pardon is not the same as being exonerated. Only the guilty can be pardoned. If the authorities pardoned her,it confirms her guilt but forgives her indiscretions. Now if she were exonerated and her record expunged, that would be some level of advancement. </div></div>

[halfwaytree]

Re: blk Canadian woman pardoned posthumously..arrested in th

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Peasie</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Know what? I agree with you, jy . And Doc said it as well

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">well i say she committed no &quot;crime&quot;...
i and i don't cater for men's unjust &quot;laws&quot;...

i say they shove their <span style="font-weight: bold">pardon</span> up their --- </div></div>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd with Peasies's edits </div><div class="ubbcode-body">A pardon is not the same as being exonerated. Only the guilty can be pardoned. If the authorities pardoned her,it confirms her guilt but forgives her indiscretions. Now if she were exonerated and her record expunged, that would be some level of advancement. </div></div> </div></div>

Yes, the term &quot;pardon&quot; was a cold slap in the face to the family. Only a full out apology would be fitting.

But so it go!