Memories of My Sister and the Roseland Theatre Incident
I had a very special relationship with my sister, Viola. Although I had two other older sisters, they left home when I was quite young, which left Viola as the only older sister I knew well growing up. Because she was twelve years older than me, she was like another mother to me, as well as a sister.
Viola took a very active interest in everything I did. I remember the long talks we had on the weekends when she did my hair in her studio and the interest she showed in my education. When I came home after school, Viola would often ask me: “Tell me Wanda, something interesting you learned at school today?” Whatever answer I gave her, she would always look surprised—giving me the impression she didn’t know or didn’t remember the things I had learned in school that day.
When I started my freshman year at Queen Elizabeth High School, I had a lot of difficulty fitting in. My best friend had dropped out of school and I didn’t have any other friends in class and I didn’t play sports or belong to any groups. I felt very alone and didn’t really look forward to going to school like I did when I was in junior high. A number of the girls in my class were from wealthier families and they wore very nice clothes. I didn’t have a lot of new clothes to choose from so I usually wore a tunic with a white blouse and red tie. This was a voluntary school uniform, but only a few of us wore it. Viola knew I wasn’t happy at school but, at first, she didn’t say anything to me. One day, I asked her if I could borrow one of her dresses; a red dress with a white trim angora collar, which was pretty and looked very expensive. Viola agreed to lend me her dress but told me to make sure I brought it back the next day in the same condition. After I wore it to school, she asked me, “Well, did anybody say anything to you?” and I said no. She then asked, “Did anyone turn their head and give you a second look?” and I said no again. “You thought that wearing a dress would make a difference in the way people see and think about you but it didn’t. You have to be yourself, Wanda, and stand up for yourself or you won’t get along anywhere.” This was good advice and with continued encouragement from Viola and my mom, I eventually adjusted to high school and did well in all my classes.
Family meant everything to Viola and she was always there for me when I needed her. I remember an incident that occurred later in my life that is a beautiful illustration of her love and support. After I was married to my first husband, I moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, which is just outside of Boston. Not long after the birth of my third child, my husband abandoned me and left me without financial support. It was 1958 and I was thirty-two years old, a single mom, living with three young boys in a small two-bedroom apartment. I was struggling to make ends meet and, eventually, my heat and lights were turned off because I couldn’t pay the bills. I resorted to using candles for light and a wood-burning potbelly stove for heat and cooking meals. It was quite a desperate situation and I was too embarrassed to tell my mother what was happening. However, because I had not written her for quite a while, she sensed something was wrong. She wrote to Viola who was living in New York City and asked her to make a visit to see how I was doing.
Before Viola’s visit, I contacted the city’s family services to apply for financial assistance in the form of food coupons to purchase groceries. I went to Winthrop Town Hall and spoke to a caseworker with family services. She asked me why I didn’t have money to buy groceries and I told her my husband had left me without any financial support. Instead of being sympathetic to my situation, the caseworker berated me for not going after my husband for support. I told her I didn’t have any means to locate him and I had three children to look after. I remember her saying to me: “You don’t deserve assistance unless you help yourself.” After that exchange, she reluctantly gave me the coupons to buy groceries.
When Viola arrived at my apartment she was appalled with what she discovered. She immediately saw I had no heat or lights and I was burning wood in a potbelly stove. She said, “I don’t know how you and the children can sleep here; it’s a fire hazard and death trap.” It was a Friday in late fall when Viola arrived and the kids were bundled up in winter jackets to keep warm. Viola asked me if I had sought assistance from family services and I told her about the conversation with the caseworker. She said she was going to look into the matter the next day, even though it was Saturday and most of the offices would be closed.
When Viola arrived at the town hall the next day, the offices, as expected, were closed, but she discovered the town council was in session. In considering the urgency of the matter, Viola entered the council room and, after excusing herself for the interruption, she spoke to the mayor and described what had transpired between the caseworker and myself. She told him it was a life and death situation and it needed immediate attention. The mayor thanked her for bringing the matter to his attention, but indicated nothing could be done until the following Monday. Viola replied in her soft but insistent manner: “That’s fine, but you should know, children die on Saturdays too.”
By the time Viola had returned to my apartment, the lights were on. Later that day, town workers arrived and removed the potbelly stove and hooked up the kitchen stove and made sure my heat was working.
After all these years, I have only late in my life come to fully understand the personal as well as historical significance of the Roseland Theatre incident. In the culture of the 1940s, I can now see how much courage my sister had to stand up against the practice of racial segregation. She was an extraordinary individual, and although many of us know about the event that took place November 8, 1946 at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, it is worth telling again from my perspective as her youngest sister.
By the mid-1940s, Viola had established a very successful beauty culture business serving Black women in Halifax. Viola expanded her business by setting up Desmond School of Beauty Culture in order to train Black women as beauticians. Her first class of five students graduated in 1945. By this time, she also had her own line of beauty products and was receiving orders from across the province. In order to serve her customers, she bought a car (a 1940 Dodge sedan). At that time, it was almost unimaginable for a Black woman, or any woman for that matter, to obtain a driver’s license, buy a car and take business trips alone on the back roads of Nova Scotia. Many of the roads she travelled were not paved and there was no causeway connecting the mainland of Nova Scotia to Cape Breton Island. Travelling across the province could take several days. This, in my view, is testimony to Viola’s independence and self-confidence.
On a cold, drizzly morning, with a packed lunch from Mom, Viola set from Halifax on a sales trip to the city of Sydney on Cape Breton Island and travelled through eastern Nova Scotia on the way. When she got to New Glasgow, 160 kilometres into her trip, she heard a troubling noise coming from the engine of the car. Viola stopped at a service station in New Glasgow and was told by the mechanic that he needed to send for a part in Halifax and her car wouldn’t be ready until the next day.
Viola wasn’t accustomed to having a lot of free time, so she decided to take in a movie, which was something she rarely did. She walked down the main street of New Glasgow and noticed on the marquee that the movie Dark Mirror was playing at the Roseland Theatre. Viola was a great fan of actress Olivia De Havilland, who starred in this movie alongside Lew Ayers. She entered the theatre and said to the cashier: “I’ll have a ticket for downstairs, please.” The girl did not reply to Viola’s request and instead gave her a ticket for upstairs and change. Viola, thinking she had purchased the ticket she had asked for, entered the theatre and sat downstairs. Within a few minutes, the usher came and tapped Viola’s shoulder and said: “Miss, you can’t sit here because your ticket is for the upstairs balcony.” My sister said she would change her ticket and she went back to the cashier and told her, “I would like this exchanged for a downstairs ticket.” The cashier replied: “We are not allowed to sell downstairs tickets to you people.” Viola immediately understood she was the target of racial discrimination, but she tried to explain that when she went to theatres in Halifax, she always sat downstairs because she had poor eyesight and needed to sit close to the screen. She tried to pay the extra ten cents for the downstairs ticket, but the girl refused to accept her money. So, Viola went back inside the theatre and returned to her seat. The usher approached her again and said: “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to call the manager if you don’t move.” Viola said she wasn’t causing any trouble and was not going to change her seat. By this time, Viola fully realized she was confronting the practice of racial segregation, and I believe she made a spontaneous decision to resist what she felt was wrong.
Initially, my sister did not know she had entered a racially segregated theatre. The practice of racial segregation varied a great deal across Nova Scotia, and it wasn’t even consistent within a particular community. If Viola had crossed the main street of New Glasgow, for example, and gone to the Academy Theatre, my understanding is she would have found the pattern of segregated seating was the opposite to the Roseland Theatre: Black patrons were required to sit downstairs while whites sat in the balcony. Since Viola lived in Halifax, she was not fully aware of the local practice of racial segregation in New Glasgow. However, it is possible that she may have known about the seating arrangement at the Roseland Theatre because her friend, Carrie M. Best, was a resident of New Glasgow and she had unsuccessfully challenged the practice of racial segregation at the Roseland Theatre five years earlier. Carrie was a regular of Viola’s and I think it is likely that, at some point, they would have discussed this subject. But given the sudden and unexpected change in Viola’s business trip plans and because she was so used to sitting on the lower floor and close to the screen when she attended movie theatres in Halifax, Viola most likely lost sight of the particular practice of racial segregation before she entered the theatre.1
Viola’s courageous refusal to leave her seat eventually provoked the theatre manager to call the police. When the police officer arrived, he took one of Viola’s arms and the manager took the other arm and together they forcefully dragged my sister out of the theatre. Viola said she didn’t go quietly and she tried to hold on to the doorjamb of the theatre entrance as they pulled her into the street. Roughed up and bruised, Viola was taken to the local jail and placed alone in a small cell. She sat upright all night long on the cell cot. I asked her later what she did while she sat alone in the cell for nearly twelve hours. “Well,” she said, “I took my purse out and dumped it out on the cot and sorted the items and worked on my appointment book. I tried to kill time by keeping myself busy. During the night, a few local drunks were brought into jail, and when they realized a woman was there, they started making obscene calls to me.” But she said she was able to block these words out of her mind and was determined to keep her composure as long as she was in jail. The next morning, she was brought before a local judge and charged with a violation of the provincial amusement tax law. The theatre manager, Mr. MacNeil, claimed Viola had purchased a ticket for a balcony seat but sat in a downstairs seat. There was ten cents difference in the price of the two tickets and a one-cent difference in the amusement tax. Viola had no council and argued on her own behalf that she offered to pay for a downstairs ticket, but the cashier refused to accept her offer. The judge found her guilty of not paying the additional one cent in tax, and she had to pay a fine of twenty dollars plus six dollars in court costs or spend thirty days in jail. Viola later told me she wanted to serve the thirty-day sentence, but she felt a responsibility to the students enrolled in Desmond School of Beauty Culture and could not afford to take time away from her business.
Viola was too physically and emotionally shaken to continue with her business trip and she returned home immediately following her ordeal. The next day, I remember how angry my father was. He was naturally very protective of his daughter, and he was absolutely livid because she had been so abused and man-handled. He insisted Viola see our family doctor so he could examine her injuries.
She went to Doctor Waddell who was a West Indian doctor practising in Halifax. Because Doctor Waddell was Black, he had no medical privileges at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, even though he was an excellent, fully licensed doctor. Doctor Waddell was appalled by what had happened to Viola and he told her she should see a lawyer. I only recently learned that after this incident, Doctor Waddell was so incensed by the injustice and injuries to Viola that he wrote several letters to the federal government in Ottawa. Nothing ever came from his letters, but his action was indicative of the level of concern and support Viola received from members of the Black community. Viola sought the advice of family and friends, including Pearleen Oliver and her husband, Reverend William Oliver. Both Pearleen and her husband were founding members of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, a branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that fought for racial equality and civil rights in the United States. The Association took up Viola’s cause and provided funds for Viola to hire a lawyer in order to appeal her case. Ultimately, she lost her case because instead of appealing her verdict in the Nova Scotia County Court, her lawyer, Fredrick William Bissett, chose to file a writ of certiorari. This allowed him to make an application directly to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court for a judicial review of the verdict. Constance Backhouse states his decision “proved disastrous” because Bissett was unable to convince the higher court there were sufficient violations of procedure in the lower court’s verdict to meet the standards required under certiorari. Once Bissett started down this path, the statute of limitation for an appeal and filing new charges before the lower court expired and the four judges of the Supreme Court had no choice but to rule that Viola’s original conviction would stand.
Despite the loss in court, Viola’s case did raise awareness in the community about the injustice of the practice of racial segregation. Carrie M. Best wrote several articles about the incident and the legal proceedings in her newspaper The Clarion, and after Viola lost her case, she and others continued to fight for racial equality in Nova Scotia.
I was only nineteen years old at the time of the incident and I didn’t fully understand its significance in the larger context of the struggle for human rights and social justice. I was, of course, upset with what had happened to my sister, but I was also embarrassed by the fact that she had been sent to jail. I think I, like a lot of others in the Black community, didn’t want to call attention to myself and to my family. It was the custom among respectable middle-class Blacks that, in matters of race, it was best to remain silent. I was also working at the time as a lab assistant at a federal government research station, and as the only Black employee, I just wanted to be like everyone else. I tried to keep the incident out of my mind, but that was difficult because Viola’s case was in the news quite a bit. One of my co-workers brought it up one day and asked, “Is Viola your sister?” I said she was and they turned away with no further comment. I was not prepared to deal with all the attention Viola was getting, and I certainly didn’t want to be in the limelight because of the fact that she had been in jail. I missed the point that Viola had done nothing wrong, and instead, I continued my childhood pattern of not wanting to appear Black. I was very immature at the time and I didn’t have the awareness and self-confidence to publicly defend my sister. Knowing what I know now, I would have acted very differently, and I would have been proud of my racial heritage and would not have been embarrassed about the action of my sister.
My Personal Journey of Self-discovery through Education and Raising Public Awareness
My current state of awareness is the result of a very long journey of self-discovery and education. I didn’t begin this journey in earnest until the year 2000, when I was seventy-three years old. Some of my children had completed university and were working, and the others were in the final stages of their education. I had just finished two terms with the Nova Scotia Advisory Council for the Status of Women and my husband, Joe, was a retired teacher. I noticed an ad in our local newspaper describing a course offered at Cape Breton University by Dr. Graham Reynolds entitled “The History of Race Relations in North America.” I had always wanted to complete a university degree. My mother believed very strongly in the importance of education, and this stayed with me all my life. As a mother, I also stressed the importance of education with my own children.
With the encouragement of my husband Joe, I started university, first by auditing Dr. Reynolds’ course and later that year as a full-time student in the bachelor of arts program at Cape Breton University. From the very beginning, I was comfortable being a student, and I felt I fit in well with younger university students. During one of our classes, Dr. Reynolds discussed racial incidents that had occurred in Nova Scotia and he mentioned Viola Desmond and the incident at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow. He and I immediately bonded when I told him Viola was my sister.
After I graduated from Cape Breton University in 2004, I began speaking about my experiences and the Roseland Theatre incident to Dr. Reynolds’ university classes and then to elementary and secondary school classes, women’s groups and other community organizations. In 2006, Adrian Harewood, a reporter with the Canadian Broadcasting Company in Toronto, interviewed me at my home in North Sydney. He was gathering information about Viola for a radio play commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of my sister’s arrest and conviction. Before he left, he suggested I contact the mayor of New Glasgow. Adrian thought the town should acknowledge Viola with some kind of commemorative plaque. He interviewed Mayor Anne MacLean of New Glasgow on his way back to Toronto and later wrote me to say Mayor MacLean was interested in creating some kind of permanent commemoration marking the event.
I wrote to Mayor MacLean in 2007 and learned she was retiring. This meant any initiative to create a memorial in honour of Viola would have to wait until the next mayor and town council took office. In the meantime, I was interviewed for an article in Beaver (now published under the title Canada’s History Magazine), and when the article appeared in the spring of 2009, it prompted me to write again to the new mayor of New Glasgow.2 It was now sixty-three years since the incident had occurred, and I thought very few people would remember what had happened or care enough to do anything about it. I wrote to Mayor Barrie MacMillan in July 2009 and was surprised to receive a quick response. Mayor MacMillan indicated he would raise the issue with the town council, and within a short period of time, I was told the council had agreed to acknowledge the Roseland Theatre incident with a commemorative bench to be placed in the African Heritage Memorial Park on Vale Road in New Glasgow.
In the summer of 2007, Tony Colaiacovo, owner of Effective Publishing in Halifax, visited me in my home in North Sydney. He was doing research on Viola and our family for his history journal, The Times of African Nova Scotians, and he intended to cover historical aspects of Black history in Nova Scotia from the early 1600s to the present.3 The cover page of his journal was devoted to Viola. Tony also introduced the Student Challenge Program in schools throughout the province. This initiative involved students at any grade level submitting a presentation, either individually or as a group. The presentation was intended to exemplify the contributions African-Nova Scotians have made to the history and culture of our province, and bursaries totalling $3,000 together with gifts and classroom resources were presented at a ceremony in Halifax in the spring.
In February 2010, Tony brought me to Halifax to help present the awards in the Student Challenge Program. He later arranged an interview with Sherri Borden Colley, a reporter who, at the time, wrote for the Chronicle Herald. She interviewed me at Tony’s home for a two-part feature article that appeared March 6, 2010.4 Sherri also interviewed retired Pictou County provincial court judge, Clyde F. Macdonald of New Glasgow, who was familiar with the case. The former judge stated that given the circumstances and the way Viola had been treated, he felt she should be pardoned. Since it was a provincial statute that was used to convict Viola, Judge MacDonald suggested the province should be the one to grant her a pardon. The day after the article appeared in the Chronicle Herald, Premier Darrell Dexter announced the government was looking into the possibility of issuing a pardon for my sister.
On April 15, 2010, I was asked to attend Province House in Halifax where Premier Dexter, speaking on behalf of the Nova Scotia government, offered an official apology to my family and to all African-Nova Scotians for the racial discrimination my sister had been subjected to. Using the Royal Prerogative invested under the authority of the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, the Honourable Mayann Francis, he announced the Government of Nova Scotia had granted a mercy free pardon to Viola Desmond. A free pardon is based on innocence and it recognizes the conviction was an error. In Viola’s case, the pardon was issued to right a wrong because, in simple terms, she was not given a fair trial. The granting of a pardon usually erases the conviction from the court records, however, in this instance, Viola’s court record was left in place for the purpose of historical documentation.
Stuart Murray, president and ceo of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg contacted me in April 2010 and offered congratulations on Viola’s pardon. He indicated the museum was creating a permanent display in honour of Viola. The museum opened to the public in 2014, and the Viola Desmond exhibit highlights the incident at the Roseland Theatre as an important and uniquely Canadian story of courage.
Shortly after the official announcement of the free pardon and apology in Halifax, President John Harker of Cape Breton University announced the creation of the Viola Desmond Chair in Social Justice, and he appointed Dr. Graham Reynolds to serve as the first holder of the chair. President Harker and his wife Eunice were present at Province House, and they were deeply touched by the event as well as my praise for the role Cape Breton University played in my personal journey of education and self-awareness.
On August 15, 2010, I was invited by the town of New Glasgow to take part in celebrations honouring Viola that coincided with the annual Black Homecoming Gala. Earlier that month, my book Sister to Courage: Stories from the World of Viola Desmond, Canada’s Rosa Parks was published, and my editor, Ron Caplan, of Breton Books, arranged to use the occasion in New Glasgow as part of the official launch of my book. The celebration began with a dedication of a commemorative bench in the African Heritage Memorial Park followed later with the unveiling of an interpretive panel at Laurie Park by Lieutenant-Governor Mayann Francis, Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Mayor Barrie MacMillan. Later that same day in the town hall, Lieutenant-Governor Mayann Francis unveiled a portrait of Viola painted by artist Davis Macintosh. Viola’s portrait is now on permanent display in Province House in Halifax.
Since the provincial pardon in 2010, the story of Viola Desmond has resonated throughout Canada and she has become a figure of national importance. In 2016, Dr. Graham Reynolds published Viola Desmond’s Canada: A History of Blacks and Racial Segregation in the Promised Land and that same year the Bank of Canada announced a nationwide contest to pick a woman to be represented on a newly designed banknote.5 There were thousands of entries and over 400 nominees. The list of nominees was eventually reduced to a short list of five women. In December 2016, the minister of finance, Bill Morneau, announced that Viola Desmond had been selected to be featured on the new ten-dollar bill. I was invited to attend the official announcement in December in Ottawa and again for the unveiling of the bill in Halifax in March 2018.
This acknowledgement of Viola as a woman of national importance and as a symbol of civil rights is, in part, the culmination of my personal journey of self-discovery through education and raising public awareness. The new ten-dollar bill serves as a permanent reminder of Viola’s achievements, especially in relation to the long and difficult struggle for equal rights and social justice in Canada. I know she would be very proud and honoured with this historic milestone.