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Jessica Rudman · To Viola Desmond 1946

To Viola Desmond, 1946 is a setting of Carolyn Nakagawa’s poem “In the Dark.” Subtitled “Olivia de Havilland to Viola Desmond, 1946,” the poem presents a fantastical take on a vignette from Canadian civil rights history. In 1946 Viola Desmond, a black businesswoman, was dragged from a movie theater for refusing to leave a seat in an area designated for whites. She was then convicted of tax evasion for the one-cent difference in ticket price for that seat. The conviction stood throughout Desmond’s life, though she eventually was pardoned more than fifty years after her death.

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