A Woman of Her Time
While most know of Viola Desmond because of her heroic stand against racism, many are unaware that she was also a hugely successful entrepreneur. Like many other Black women of her generation, Viola strove to fulfill the conventional role of being a wife with the expectation of raising a family. As we have seen, Viola was also driven by a strong sense of independence and ambition to pursue a career, even at a time when career opportunities for Black women were severely limited. Given the extent of racial discrimination that existed in Canada during most of the 20th century, it is remarkable that by her mid-thirties, Viola achieved distinction as a successful Black businesswoman and the most prominent Black beauty culturist in Canada. Drawing on the example of her family and close relatives, she became a symbol of Black middle-class respectability. As a woman and beauty culturist, she personified a feminine persona that inspired a younger generation of Black women.
Viola was described by her contemporaries as a refined, “petite, quiet-living, demure” feminine woman who was always “eloquently coiffed and fashionably dressed.”1 Her youngest sister, Wanda, recalls that Viola had a strong and caring personality. “She never raised her voice and always treated others with respect.” She taught her students to be well dressed and “always be ready to meet the public, but on the same level.” Viola would tell the young women who completed training at Desmond School of Beauty Culture that “as graduates you are women who know who you are.”2
As we discussed in chapter 1, Viola modelled herself after the Davis family and her mother, who instilled in her a sense of self-confidence and the belief that through education and hard work she could accomplish almost anything she put her mind to. When she first learned about Madam C.J. Walker, a hugely successful Black businesswoman who created a beauty enterprise in the United States, she was inspired to follow in her footsteps and become a beautician.
Viola realized the tremendous business potential the beauty culture profession had for Black women in Canada. Although hairdressing was a limited profession in Canada for Black women, it was a well-established business enterprise in the United States. Even before the American civil war, free Black women in the north developed flourishing businesses, serving wealthy white clientele in some of the major cities in the United States.3 Viola also quickly discovered Walker had not just created and marketed Black beauty products, but she promoted a modern image of Black womanhood together with a means for Black women to achieve social acceptance and economic independence.
Early Pioneers of Black Beauty Culture in the United States: Annie Turnbo Malone and Madam C.J. Walker
By the early 20th century, hairdressing in the United States had become part of a burgeoning beauty culture industry that provided white and Black women products for hairstyling and care as well as a wide range of skincare products. With the aid of an aggressive and increasingly sophisticated advertising campaign, this industry offered women the promise of beauty, success and romance. In addition to the well-known cosmetic companies associated with names like Harriet Hubbard Ayer, Max Factor, Helen Rubinstein and Canadian-born Jane Arden, there were several Black-owned businesses that began serving the particular needs of Black women. Among the first and the most prominent of these Black pioneer entrepreneurs were Annie Turnbo Pope Malone and Sarah Breedlove, who later adopted her second husband’s name and became known as Madam C.J. Walker. Both of these women were born of parents who had been former slaves and they followed similar paths, rising from poverty in the shadow of slavery to building multi-faceted enterprises of business, education, philanthropy and racial-uplift.4
Annie Turnbo was born in Massa County, Illinois in 1869 and was the tenth of eleven children. Both her parents died when she was very young and she moved to Peoria, Illinois to live with her older sister, Ada Moody. In high school, Turnbo demonstrated an aptitude for chemistry, but frequent illness prevented her from graduating. Although her employment opportunities were limited, Turnbo soon discovered she could combine her interest in chemistry with her sister’s knowledge of herbal medicine to create products that improved the hair and scalp of Black women.
By the turn of the century, Turnbo and her sister began manufacturing one of her most successful products—a shampoo and conditioner called Wonderful Hair Grower, which she sold door-to-door. Black women had long suffered from hair and scalp problems and most of the remedies were ineffective and even harmful. The most commonly used preparations contained animal byproducts, such as cooking oil and goose fat that were used to condition and straighten hair. Frequent use of these ingredients resulted in damaged hair follicles.5 Turnbo quickly found a market for her shampoo and other products. In 1900, she patented a hot comb used for straightening hair and in 1906 she patented her shampoo under the brand name “Poro,” which she marketed through a national network of local agents who sold her products door-to-door. In 1914, Turnbo married Aaron Malone, a school principal, and within a few years she had succeeded in creating a vast business enterprise that included the manufacture and sale of beauty products as well as the Poro College of Cosmetics in St. Louis. The college provided prospective Black beauty culturists with a broad curriculum that included training students on how to conduct themselves at work and in public, and on “walking, talking and style of dress designed to maintain a solid public persona.”6 By the mid-1920s, Turnbo’s beauty culture enterprise had branches in several countries with thousands of agents.
Sarah Breedlove was born December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. Like Turnbo, she was orphaned and at the age of ten she moved to Vicksburg, Louisiana to live with her sister. Sarah married Moses McWilliams when she was only fourteen years old and had a daughter, Lelia, who later changed her name to A’Lelia and eventually became an influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance.7
When Sarah was twenty, her husband disappeared, likely as a result of foul play, and his body was never found. After that tragic loss, she moved to St. Louis where she sought to advance herself by attending public school at night and working as a laundress during the day. After she moved to St. Louis, she met Turnbo, who was at the early stages of establishing her beauty culture enterprise.8 This meeting was a defining moment in Sarah’s life because it reinforced her own desire for self-improvement and it introduced her to a promising new franchise business model which, as historian Kathy Peiss argues, allowed certified beauticians “to own salons, advertise their services as ‘systems’ shops, and capitalize upon the entrepreneur’s name and reputation.”9 Although the exact nature of this initial acquaintance is not known, it is clear both women were of like minds in developing a method of hair and scalp care. Sarah had been very self-conscious about the condition of her hair, especially her persistent hair loss that resulted in balding. Sarah recalled later in life that she had tried unsuccessfully to improve the condition of her hair using “preparations manufactured by others” and eventually discovered her own system of hair and scalp care.10 This statement stands in contrast to the claim made by Turnbo that she was “personally” responsible for restoring Sarah’s hair. Whatever the circumstances behind Sarah’s discovery of a cure for hair loss, she was quick to realize the growth potential of Turnbo’s business and in 1903, she became a Poro agent. The following year, she moved to Denver as a regional representative for the company.
After Sarah married Charles Joseph Walker in 1906, she immediately began marketing her own line of beauty products under her own brand name of Madam C.J. Walker. The adoption of the French prefix Madam was a clever marketing ploy that added an air of distinction signifying her products were of the highest quality.11 This practice was also adopted by Turnbo, who used the title Madam Poro, and later by the Black American beauty culturist, Sarah Spencer Washington—known in the industry as Madam Washington.
Walker’s products were met with almost instant success due in large part to her zeal and marketing skills as well as her family support network that included her husband and her daughter Lelia. In addition to selling a shampoo similar to Turnbo’s under the brand name, Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, she offered a scalp treatment course for Black women with certificate of instruction, “teaching them how to grow their own hair.”12 After Walker’s students were trained in her method of hair grooming and growth, they could achieve the financial benefits of working as a Walker agent and becoming a member of the Walker franchise. In the initial years of her business, Walker established a home base for her business in Denver, which she later relocated to Indianapolis. Her daughter, Lelia, was in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Walker beauty studio. In the evenings, she mixed and cooked ingredients and prepared products for shipment to her mother’s growing number of mail order customers. This division of labour allowed Madam Walker to devote her time to expanding her franchise through a vigorous on-the-road recruiting, marketing and sales campaign.13
Walker employed a “pyramid” system of organization based on an ever-expanding recruitment and direct sales of her products. She and her agents travelled throughout the United States selling products and training local recruits in her beauty culture method. These recruits, in turn, would become certified agents who eagerly expanded the business to new areas. The ever-widening circle of recruits helped create one of the most successful Black-owned businesses in the United States and extended employment opportunities and the promise of financial independence to thousands of Black women. Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, writes in her biography, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of C.J. Walker: “For women seeking something other than domestic work and the grime of factories, Madam Walker offered an alternative. Those who learned ‘Walker’s Scientific Scalp Treatment,’ her ads promised, could earn ‘from $15.00 to $40.00 per week’ in their homes or salons.”14 When Walker moved to Harlem in 1916, the New York Times reported she was one of the most successful self-made women in the United States and had 10,000 sales agents.15 When Walker died at the age of fifty-one, in 1919, it is estimated she had 20,000 agents and a vast business empire that included manufacturing, marketing and sales of her products as well as Lelia College in Pittsburgh, named after her daughter, and 200 local beauty schools in all regions of the country. Walker was also a philanthropist and civil rights activist. She gave generously to a number of causes, including funding for a new ymca facility in Indianapolis. In the last years of her life she also became personally involved in the campaign to end the practice of lynching by making it a federal crime throughout the United States.16
The success of Walker’s business was not without personal conflict and controversy. Almost immediately after she started her business, she became personally embroiled in a dispute with Turnbo over one of her signature products, Madam Walker Wonderful Hair Grower. Turnbo publicly rebuked Walker for allegedly using her formula and in a letter to Denver’s daily newspaper, The Statesman, she warned readers, “BEWARE OF IMITATIONS.”17 This conflict spawned a fierce rivalry between the two companies that was waged through advertising and competing customer testimonials published in local newspapers. Bundles points out that despite Turnbo and Walker’s claim of proprietary ownership, “the real secret was a regime of regular shampoos, scalp massage, nutritious food and an easily duplicated, sulfur-based formula that neither of them had originated.”18 At the time Turbo and Walker had started their businesses, there were dozens of products available at local pharmacies and through mail order. Some of these included shampoos, soaps and ointments that promised to soothe the scalp and remedy itching and irritation—the same conditions Walker and many other Black women suffered from. However, the vast majority of these products were produced by white-owned businesses that regularly denigrated Black self-image and hair texture in favour of an exclusively white ideal that promoted long, supple, straight hair. Typical among the products that targeted Blacks during this period was Curl-I-Cure: A Cure For Curls produced and marketed by Lincoln Chemical in Aurora, Illinois. Their ad stated: “You owe it to yourself… to make yourself as attractive as possible. Attractiveness will contribute much to your success—both socially and commercially. Positively nothing detracts so much from your appearance as short, matted, unattractive curly hair.” The ad guaranteed that Curl-I-Cure was “an ideal, safe preparation and makes kinky, curly hair straight.”19
As this ad suggests, the beauty culture industry was highly racialized and it was built on a white ideal of femininity and physical attractiveness. For many Blacks, the legacy of slavery combined with the prevailing notions of race to reinforce a negative self-image of being inferior and less attractive than whites. During the early 20th century, a Black woman’s beauty was measured against white standards—straight hair and light-coloured skin.20 During Walker’s life, one of the most prevailing images of feminine beauty was the famous Gibson Girl, which was the creation of the artist Charles Dana Gibson. This iconic image of white, middle-class femininity became the symbol of the “New Woman” that appeared in newspapers and magazines and popularized in songs, women’s apparel, hairstyles and even wallpaper.21 Black women were bombarded with these and other images of white beauty and, in order to complete the virtually impossible task of white emulation begun by hair straightening, they were offered products to whiten their skin. One of many businesses that marketed these products was Crane and Company in Richmond, Virginia. In a newspaper ad for its “A Wonderful Face Bleach,” the company promised the product would create “a PEACH-LIKE complexion … if used as directed. [It] will turn the skin of a Black or brown person four or five shades lighter, and a mulatto person perfectly white.”22
Products that conspicuously emulated the white ideal of beauty received a mixed reaction among the Black community. Although hair straightening and skin toning products were popular among many Black women, others objected to these beauty aids on grounds that they undermined racial pride by equating natural Black physical attributes with inferiority. For this reason, some Black leaders regarded the beauty culture industry with suspicion while others clung to the strict Victorian ideal that considered cosmetics to be an unwholesome and artificial form of adornment. The Black educator, civil rights activist and business leader, Booker T. Washington, didn’t go this far, but he objected strongly to hair and skin care products that imitated white standards of beauty. For this reason, he deliberately left out any mention of manufacturers of hair products in his 1907 publication, The Negro Business and he, initially, opposed membership of cosmetic companies in the National Negro Business League.23 Washington and other Black leaders were particularly critical of Black newspapers for publishing ads for hair straighteners and skin bleachers. In spite of the opposition, this was a common practice that continued, even among Black newspapers that expressed progressive editorial policies in support of racial pride and uplift.24
Walker supported efforts to improve the lives of poor Black women and she was determined to win the acceptance of her products among Black business leaders. In 1912, she attended the annual meeting of the National Negro Business League. After Washington repeatedly refused to allow her to speak, Walker rushed to the podium and demanded to be heard. After seizing centre stage, she passionately addressed the members proclaiming: “I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the south; I was promoted from there to the washtub…then I was promoted to the cook kitchen and from there I promoted myself onto the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.”25 Washington was so impressed with Walker’s impassioned speech that she was invited back the next year as a keynote speaker. “I am not ashamed of my past,” she told the audience the following year. “I am not ashamed of my humble beginnings. Don’t think because you have to go down in the washtub that you are not a lady!”26 Walker’s comments and life story gave voice to a new ideal of Black womanhood in which beauty and being a lady was equated with self-worth, independence and respect.
The New Ideal of Black Beauty: “If not Black, Certainly not White.”
Walker never marketed her products with the expressed intent of emulating the white ideal of beauty. As we have mentioned, she became a beauty culturist in order to cure common hair and scalp ailments and to help provide a positive self-image and economic opportunities for Black women. The Walker system, according to the noted Black scholar and civil rights activist, W.E.B. DuBois, “did not imitate white folk;” it “revolutionized” the personal habits of Black women throughout America by teaching good hygiene and grooming practices.27 Despite the praise from one of America’s preeminent Black leaders, over the years, Walker has been falsely accused of being a race imitator—a hair straightener rather than a hair culturist. She has been called the “de-kink queen” and erroneously credited with creating the hot comb, which is a hair straightening device that is thought to have been invented in 1872 by the French hairdresser, Marcel Grateau.28 Amid such accusations, it is clear that for many critics of the beauty culture industry, there was no middle ground and Walker, being the most successful of all the Black beauty culturists, was lumped into the same category with less scrupulous and mostly white manufacturers who deliberately promoted hair straightening and skin bleaches as a means of emulating whites.
The Black quest for self-identity and beauty in a white-dominated society is by its very nature a complex process and cannot be reduced to a simple dichotomy between favouring white over Black.29 Walker and other Black beauty culturists sought to achieve racial-uplift by creating an ideal of beauty based on self-respect and racial pride, rather than by imitating whites. It should be noted that by the early 20th century, Blacks had become a modern urban population with rising social and political expectations. Bundles makes the important point that in their “desire for a more sophisticated appearance, Black beauty culturists had begun to create an amalgamated aesthetic, an African-American look that borrowed, adapted and reconfigured the fashions of both cultures.”30
By the 1920s, the beauty culture industry began to fully realize the potential for cosmetic sales among African-Americans and in order to capture this segment of the consumer market, white-owned companies created products that promoted racial pride by emphasizing this new “amalgamated aesthetic.” In 1922, America Products, a mail order company, developed a new face powder under the brand name High Brown. It was “made especially for dark complexioned people, something entirely new in face powders and already in popular demand.” A Chicago-based company founded by the wholesale supplier, J.E. McBrady, started a new specialties line “for Brown Skin People” which, according to Peiss, was sold exclusively by agents and “advertised with appeals to race pride.”31 Perhaps the most successful of all these companies was Plough Chemical Company, which developed a Black cosmetics line that it advertised widely in Black newspapers and sold at a discount directly to the public through drug stores.32 One of Plough’s most popular products during the 1920s was a face cream called Golden Brown. The ad for this product explained that it “won’t whiten your skin—as that can’t be done,” but it would create a “soft, light, bright, smooth complexion.” Peiss notes that the word bright had a dual meaning: “By smoothing rough, uneven skin, creams did brighten, in a sense, by improving the reflectivity of light, but among African-Americans the term had a distinct connotation, that of light brown skin.33
By the early 1930s, most Blacks in the United States and Canada were drawn toward a light brown skin ideal of colour. This image became broadly associated with this new ideal of womanhood—a dignified, well-groomed, modern, bronze skinned woman. “She was no simple avatar of white emulation,” writes Peiss, “but rather the product of a shift in African-American self-perceptions—if not a Black girl, then certainly not a white one either.”34 Black women were introduced to this ideal of beauty in every aspect of popular culture; in newspapers, magazines, musical entertainment and movies. In a typical Black beauty culture advertisement, Madam C.J. Walker promoted her hair and skin preparations as “glorifying the womanhood of our race.” They were a means of “hope” and “cheer” in producing “long, luxurious hair and a beauty-kissed complexion.”35
Wanda Robson remembers that as a young woman, her sister Viola was an admirer of the opera singer Marion Anderson and the actress and entertainer, Josephine Baker.36 Both women were bronze-skin African-American women who overcame racial barriers to become renowned international stars. Baker became popular during the early 1930s as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies and as an actress in several movies. In 1937, she moved to France and continued her career as an entertainer and actress. She was nicknamed the “Bronze Venus” and loved by French audiences for her rhythmic African style of dancing.37 According to Wanda, Viola admired Baker’s strong independent character and beauty, particularly her ability to use makeup and haircare to make herself look beautiful.
Viola and the Emergence of Black Beauty Culture in Canada
By the time Viola opened the pages of a women’s magazine and discovered the story of Madam C.J. Walker in the early 1930s, the beauty culture industry had come of age in the United States. It had grown in value more than ten-fold over the previous twenty years, from a mere $14.2 million in 1909 to $141 million in 1929 and Americans were collectively spending an estimated $700 million annually on beauty aids.38 In Canada, the beauty culture industry was dominated by manufacturers from the United States that sold their products in local pharmacies and in major department stores like Eaton’s, Simpson’s, Hudson’s Bay and Dupuis Frères in Quebec. The Black beauty culture industry in Canada during the early 20th century was a minor, mostly local enterprise, consisting mainly of small beauty parlours and barbershops run by barbers who specialized in cutting women’s hair as well as Black hairdressers who often provided their services out of their homes. There were no national distribution networks for homegrown Black beauty aids and no provincial or national franchise operations similar to those developed by Turnbo and Walker. The small number of products available to Blacks in Canada developed much later than in the United States and were initially advertised only in Black newspapers like the Ontario-based Dawn of Tomorrow and in The Clarion, founded in 1946 by Carrie M. Best.39
Black women in Canada had great difficulty becoming qualified beauticians. There were no Black beauty culture schools in Canada during the 1930s and Black women who wanted to become certified beauticians had to attend white beauty schools or seek training in the United States. Viola knew she would not be accepted at beautician training schools in Halifax so, in 1936, she enrolled in a one-year program at Field Beauty Culture School in Montreal. As mentioned earlier, Viola and Jack were married while she was training in Montreal and upon their return to Halifax, Viola started Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture.
Viola was an ambitious, hard-working professional and, following in the footsteps of Madam C.J. Walker, she expanded her business by providing more services and beauty aids to Black women in Halifax. Always wanting to be the best at her profession, Viola decided in 1939 to further her training by attending the Apex College of Beauty Culture and Hairdressing in Atlantic City. This proved to be one of the most defining moments in Viola’s career because it brought her into the direct influence of Madam Sara Spencer Washington, who along with Turnbo and Walker, was one of the three central pillars of the Black beauty culture industry in the United States.40
Washington was born in Beckley, Virginia in 1889 and after graduating from Norfolk Mission College in Virginia, she studied cosmetology at Northwestern College in Pennsylvania and later, she took courses in chemistry at Columbia University in New York City. Washington moved to Atlantic City in 1911 and two years later, she started a hairdressing salon. She soon realized that the city’s sizeable African-American population of over 10,000 offered an extraordinary opportunity for expanding her beauty culture enterprise. She started selling her products door-to-door and eventually adopted the franchise model for marketing and recruiting agents. In 1919, Washington founded the Apex News and Hair Company and over the next two decades she built a multifaceted Apex business empire that sold seventy products and included laboratories, a drug store, a publishing company that produced the Apex News for the company’s 35,000 agents, as well as the Apex Beauty School with locations in twelve cities throughout the United States. Like Madam C.J. Walker, Madam Washington has been credited with being a self-made millionaire, a philanthropist, civil rights advocate, and one of the most distinguished businesswomen in America.41
Apex graduates, circa 1938. Courtesy of Royston Scott.
In attending Apex College in Atlantic City, Viola had the opportunity to train under the personal tutelage of Sara Spencer Washington. As part of her curriculum of study, she was introduced to the Apex system of beauty care, which incorporated the latest techniques and styles of hairdressing, treatments for scalp disorders, cosmetology, as well as the basics of hygiene, chemistry and wig-making. Students in the program also learned that in becoming beauty culturists, they could achieve personal advancement and financial independence. “Now is the time to plan for your future by learning a depression-proof business,” Washington’s promotional material claimed. Like the program of study at Turnbo’s Poro College and Walker’s Lelia College and School of Beauty Culture, the Apex program emphasized the education of the whole person, including appearance, etiquette, health, diet and hygiene, together with practical instruction on how to run a clean and well-managed beauty shop. Outside the college in Atlantic City, the students were often seen together in public and were instantly recognizable by their fashionable Apex uniforms of white caps and apron-style skirts. Etta Nelson Francisco, an Apex College graduate, recalls that Washington instilled self-confidence and racial pride in her students. “We were given a spirit of hope” and told that “we are just as attractive as white people.” According to Francisco, Washington took a personal interest in her students and would tell them: “Hold your head high” and “be a lady!”42
After Viola received her diploma from Apex College, she returned to Halifax in 1940 with plans to expand her business. She wanted to provide her clients with all the latest hairstyling techniques, products and styles she learned in Atlantic City, including offering them hairpieces, chignon (bun) attachments, and custom-made wigs. Although Madam Washington introduced her students to wig-making, Viola knew that to master this highly skilled craft, she would require additional training. This led her to leave Halifax once again to complete an apprenticeship course in wig-making at the Louis Feder Advanced Hair Styling Studio on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Given the prevailing views of gender, work and marriage, it is perhaps not surprising Viola’s business ambitions together with her extended trips to the United States for training created tension within her marriage. Jack initially encouraged Viola’s hairdressing business, but he grew increasingly weary that her growing professional commitments and time away from home would threaten her role as wife and homemaker. This was in spite of the fact that their marriage remained childless.43
In 1942, Viola relocated Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture to a larger facility on Gottingen Street, and at the same time she and her husband moved from their apartment to their house on Prince William Street. Viola turned the back room of her beauty culture studio into a production facility where she prepared face powder and pomade for sale under the brand name Sepia (the Latinized word for the colour reddish-brown). She also built a wefting loom for wig-making. As a teenager, Wanda frequently visited the studio and remembers seeing Viola washing and preparing hair, and in the evenings and on weekends, she could be seen threading and weaving strands of human hair into custom-made wigs. Viola’s mother helped with this and other aspects of the business and later that year, Viola also hired a young girl, Rose Gannon, to work as a part-time assistant. Wanda also started working part time in Viola’s studio after she graduated from high school in 1943. She weighed ingredients and prepared products for sale and for shipment to Viola’s mail order customers. Over the next few years, Viola also expanded her line of Sepia beauty products, which she advertised for sale in The Clarion. Her products included face powder, Sur Gro for hair growth, Press Oil for hair straightening, Gloss Wax for hair texture and shine, hair dye, perfume and lipstick.44 Viola produced many of these products herself using original formulas she was able to acquire and ingredients she purchased from wholesale drug companies and beauty supply companies in Halifax and elsewhere in the Maritimes and in the United States.45
Viola shared a similar vision of beauty as Madam C.J. Walker and her former teacher, Madam Washington. Like these earlier pioneers of Black beauty culture, Viola promoted the image of Black pride, femininity and middle-class respectability in all aspects of her business. Her Sepia face powder produced a “nut brown” colour and was “especially blended to enhance dark complexions.”46 The Sepia image was an extension of the “amalgamated aesthetic” of the 1930s that was commonly known during the post-war era as the “Brownskin” ideal of beauty. According to author Laila Haidarali, this “Brownskin” image was an attainable standard for many Black women and it represented “an exemplar of social, sexual and racial parity” that challenged existing racial stereotypes.47
In a society where appearance was associated with ability, brown as opposed to lighter and darker skinned complexion “exemplified the most suitable public female face for post-war African America.”48 “Brownskin” was associated with the attributes of “charm, poise, and eloquence” that became the template of Black beauty within the modelling and advertising industry. By the early 1950s this ideal permeated all aspects of Black popular culture, and even though Canada lacked a sustainable national market for Black consumer publications, popular American magazines like Ebony that disseminated this image were widely available in Canada through subscription or at news outlets in most major cities. Local beauty parlours with a Black clientele promoted this image along with the latest hairstyles. In Halifax, Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture promoted the “Brownskin” ideal and all the other latest trends in Black beauty culture and, by the mid-1940s, Viola had established a growing network of clientele throughout Nova Scotia. She continued to improve and update her skills as a hair culturist and, in 1945, this effort was rewarded when the Montreal Orchid School of Beauty Culture awarded her the Silver Trophy for hairstyling.49
Desmond School of Beauty Culture
Following the examples of Walker and Washington, Viola dreamed of establishing a franchise beauty culture enterprise that would train young Black women to become beauty culturists and “Desmond” agents who would promote her beauty products and services — eventually expanding her business throughout Canada. Viola wanted to replicate in Canada, on a much smaller scale, the success Walker and Washington had in providing employment and business opportunities to tens of thousands of African-American women. Although Canada’s involvement in the Second World War had provided employment opportunities for Black women in wartime industries, these jobs were, in many instances, only temporary. During the post-war era, Blacks faced many of the same racial barriers that had existed before the war and, as wartime industries wound down, many Black women were forced to return to low wage jobs in the domestic service industry.50 The war, it seemed, ended Hitler’s and the Nazi reign of hatred and intolerance in Germany, but it did not end racial segregation and discrimination at home. This contradiction did not go unnoticed at the time and it helped give rise to a new generation of civil rights activists in Canada.51
Viola with School of Beauty Culture graduates, ca. 1945. MG 21.14: Wanda Robson and Viola Desmond Collection. 16-89-30229. Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University.
Viola was an ambitious businesswoman and she had no desire to become involved publicly in the struggle for equal rights. She was, however, deeply committed to the principle that Black women who wanted to work should have employment opportunities outside of the domestic service industry. She was well aware that the beauty culture industry was in its infancy in Canada and it offered tremendous potential for employment and career opportunities for Black women. In 1944, Viola opened Desmond School of Beauty Culture in Halifax, which was the first school of its kind in Canada for training Black beauty culturists.
Apart from personal memories of former students and some members of her family, there are very few remaining records of Viola’s business and school of beauty culture. But by all existing accounts, it is evident Viola modelled her school after Apex College in Atlantic City. She kept her studio immaculately clean and, like Madam Washington, she cultivated a sense of professionalism, self-confidence and pride among her students. Desmond School of Beauty Culture students were expected to follow a strict code of appearance and conduct that was monitored on a daily basis. All her students wore white uniforms and regulation stockings and were expected to always conduct themselves in a most professional and respectful manner. Viola was referred to as “Mrs. Desmond” by her students and was remembered for her “strength of character” and “the way she carried herself.”52 Like Madam Walker and Madam Washington, she was the personification of dignity and respect—a modern Black lady of beauty and distinction. Viola promoted these traits among her students in order to enhance their self-esteem, employment opportunities and social advancement.
On that fateful day of the Roseland Theatre incident in November 1946, Viola’s business was thriving. Desmond School of Beauty Culture had expanded from five students, who had graduated in 1944, to an enrolment of fifteen students. The program had expanded from one year to two years and she now had students from the entire Atlantic region, including Quebec. Like Madam C.J. Walker’s business during its formative years, Viola’s depended on the contributions of her family members, particularly her mother. Her part-time assistant, Rose Gannon, had recently graduated from Desmond School of Beauty Culture and was now working for her full time.53
There is no way to accurately measure the full impact of the Roseland Theatre incident and its aftermath on Viola’s beauty culture business. The incident was a reminder to Viola of what she must have known on some level: that being a respected Black businesswoman and a lady in Nova Scotia during the 1940s was no inoculation against racial discrimination and injustice. The publicity over the incident and her appeal threw Viola into the uncomfortable spotlight of public notoriety, which created greater tension within her marriage. These were undoubtedly major distractions which prevented Viola from giving undivided attention to her beauty culture enterprise.
After Viola lost her case before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in 1947, she resumed her life in Halifax. Her second class of fifteen students graduated that year and she continued promoting her beauty products and services. Viola, however, never realized her dream of establishing a national franchise and her business was limited to Halifax and the Atlantic region. Without an expanding national market for her products, it was virtually impossible to sustain the kind of growth necessary to support a franchise business. The Black population of Canada in 1951 was estimated to be less than 20,000 and it was mainly concentrated in urban areas that were not in close proximity to each other.54 In contrast, Madam Washington started her beauty culture business in Atlantic City, which had a Black population of over 10,000.
In addition to lacking a national market for her products, Viola eventually faced stiff competition. In 1949, Mirror Tone Hair Products appeared on the market “coast to coast.” It boasted of having a strong footing in the Atlantic region and was in direct competition with Viola’s Sepia line of beauty products, the company advertised in The Clarion.55
The Clarion: published in the interest of coloured Nova Scotians V. 4 no. 3 (1949: Feb.16), Beinecke Library, Yale University.
Black-owned beauty culture companies faced an uphill struggle during the post-war years due mainly to increased competition from mass-market, white-owned cosmetic companies. By the early 1950s, cosmetic companies offered specialized products for Black women that were available in Canada at Eaton’s and at local drug stores throughout the country.56
Viola continued operating her beauty culture studio and selling her beauty products until the mid 1950s. She continued seeking new formulas for her products and providing the latest hairstyles for her clientele.57 Although her dream of following in the footsteps of Madam C.J. Walker was only partially realized, Viola never ceased in her professional ambitions. Following the separation from her husband Jack, Viola left Halifax to pursue other business interests, first in Montreal and eventually in New York City. Wanda recalls that after Viola moved to New York in 1955, she worked for a while as a cigarette girl at Small’s Paradise Club in Harlem and attended business college. She eventually became an entertainment agent and helped promote local musicians until she died suddenly in her Harlem apartment in 1965 of an intestinal bleed.