Viola Desmond
Source: Wikipedia: Viola Desmond
Human rights • Historical Archive • 🇨🇦 Canada • 0 views

Viola Desmond 🇨🇦

Viola Irene Desmond (Known as "Viola Desmond")
Black Canadian Civil Rights Pioneer, Beautician, Businesswoman
Born Jul 06, 1914 🇨🇦 Halifax (Nova Scotia), Canada
Passed Away Feb 07, 1965 New York City, United States
Lifespan 50 years old
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Notice / Correction
"She sat so that an entire nation could stand up for dignity and equal rights."

Archival Overview

Iconic Black Nova Scotian businesswoman whose courageous refusal to leave the whites-only section of a New Glasgow cinema in 1946 ignited Canada's modern civil rights movement, featured on the $10 banknote.

Biographical Record

A successful beautician and mentor to young Black women across the Maritimes, Viola Desmond built her own beauty parlor and cosmetics school in Halifax. On November 8, 1946, while her car was being repaired in New Glasgow, she went to the Roseland Theatre and sat on the main floor.

Arrested and dragged from the theater because the floor was racially segregated, she was convicted on a pretext of tax evasion over a one-cent ticket difference. Supported by Carrie Best and the NSAACP, her appeal galvanized Black Canadians and led to the abolition of segregation in Nova Scotia. In 2018, she became the first Canadian woman on a regularly circulating banknote.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Camp Hill Cemetery
Halifax (Nova Scotia), Canada
GPS: 44.6444, -63.5861
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