Viola Desmond

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We have had a lot of requests over the years for an episode on Viola Desmond, who was jailed and tried and convicted after refusing to leave her seat in a segregated movie theater in Glasgow, Nova, Scotia. In that's probably what she's the most known for today, thanks in part to the efforts of her younger sister, Wanda Robson, which started a little over twenty years ago. But Viola Desmond was also an entrepreneur. She was inspired by the story of Madam C. J. Walker to start her own business. She established the first beauty salon for black women in her area, and she founded a school to train other black women to do the same. So she's one of those people where her life a lot of times gets summarized as this one moment that there's a whole other story. Viola Irene Davis was born in Halifax on July six. Her father, James Albert Davis, held several jobs over the years, including working as a barber, a stevedore and eventually a car dealer. Her mother, Gwendolen Irene Johnson Davis, was the daughter of a Baptist minister. A lot of sources described this as an interracial marriage because Gwendolen's mother was white and her father had what's described as a small amount of African ancestry. In the words of Viola's sister, Wanda, quote, while Mum considered herself colored, moms certainly looked white. Yeah, there are various papers I read about about Viola Desmond that talk about how this would have affected their family. Um, it doesn't come up a lot though, and her sister's writing about the family. So it's hard is how how much of that is speculative and how much effects there like actual lived experience. In addition to Viola and Wanda, James and Gwendolen had thirteen other children, nine of whom survived childhood. The older children helped with the younger ones, and since Viola was the youngest of the four older girls, she took a big interest in her younger siblings care and education. And this was especially true as her older sisters got married and left the house. Uh, there's some gender divide here. But also the family was mostly girls, a lot of girls in the family. This family did struggle at times, especially during the Great Depression, but Wanda Robson describes their home as one where you could just feel the love, and their parents made sure that the children never felt deprived. We really don't have a lot of personal detail or reflections about Viola's life. She did not leave any journals or letters, but we do know a few things thanks to her sister's writing. The family was devoutly religious. Since Gwendolen had been raised Baptist, she often went to Baptist services, and James was Anglican. They didn't seem to be concerned about which churches their children joined as they grew up, as long as they went to church, and Viola and her siblings ultimately joined four different denominations. Viola herself received confirmation at Trinity Anglican Church. The Davis's were also a respected part of the black community in Halifax and were active in church and community organizations. At this point, the Halifax area had two primarily black neighborhoods. One was in the North end of Halifax itself, and the other was Africville, which was on the outskirts of the city. In many ways, both of these communities were thriving. They were socially very close knit. They were home to black owned businesses and community groups, but they were also the targets of racism and discrimination. One reason, then, the black population was clustered into just these two areas, is that many property deeds for other parts of the city came along with racially restrictive covenants, and he specified that the property could only be sold to a white buyer. Africaville, in particular, was also excluded from a lot of basic city services like clean water, a sewage system, and trash collection, even though its residents were paying city taxes. The Davis has lived in the North End, and when Viola was three years old, their neighborhood was devastated by the Halifax Explosion. This explosion took place when two ships collided in Halifax Harbor on December six, nineteen. More than seventeen hundred people died, and the explosion was particularly destructive and deadly in the Richmond neighborhood of Halifax's North End and the Megama community of Turtle Grove just across the Harbor. The Davis has lived just a few blocks back from the water, and the explosion shattered the windows of their home as well as causing other damage. Viola was in her high chair at the time in a window blind fell over her from the blown out window. For a moment, her family was afraid that she had been killed. When Viola started elementary school, it was that one of the only integrated schools in Nova Scotia at the time. Public schools all over Canada were often segregated by race, although only Nova Scotia and Ontario had segregation laws on the books. These laws were written in such a way that they allowed for segregated schools, but once they were in place, white officials often used them as a justification to force black children to attend separate schools. Outside the scope of this podcast, Canada also had a system of residential schools for Indigenous students, which we talked about on the show before. These separated Indigenous children from their families and their communities and forced them to assimilate with white culture and an active cultural genocide. Viola's grandfather had been part of a successful effort to integrate some of the public schools in Halifax that started in eighteen seventy six. This opened up the possibility for black students to attend high school since there were no segregated high schools for black children in Halifax, but Viola and her siblings still experienced racism within those integrated schools. For example, Viola's sister Wanda, recalled an incident in which Viola and their mother confronted her Grade two teacher, who required black children to sit in the back of the room but invited the students who made the highest test scores to sit in the front row. Wanda had the top score of the whole class, and her teacher had tried to move her Integrade three rather than allowing her to sit in the front. Yeah, this wasn't a reward. It was a Wanda is clearly smarter than all the rest of us, We're going to move her into like in a very sarcastic way. It's an infuriating story. Um Viola earned her high school diploma in two and after that she became a teacher. Teaching. Colleges wouldn't admit black students in Nova Scotia, so black teachers qualified by taking an exam. After she passed her exam, Viola taught for a couple of years that segregated schools for black children, which was the only place that black teachers were allowed to teach. She didn't want to be a teacher forever, though. She had read an article about beauty entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C. J. Walker and was really inspired by her example. Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Louisiana in eighteen sixty seven. She was the first child in her family to be born into freedom after the end of the U s Civil War. She took the name Madam C. J. Walker after marrying Charles James Walker, using Madam to give her line of beauty and hair products a more refined and luxurious name. She also established schools of beauty culture and trained thousands of black people in skills like hair care, beauty, in the treatment of scalp conditions. She's credited as the first woman in the US to become a self made millionaire. Viola wanted to do something similar in Nova Scotia, where there were no beauty schools that accepted black women, and there were also no beauty salons in Halifax that would take black women as customers, although there were some barbershops for black men. One was owned by Jack Desmond, who became a barber after an on the job injury put an end to his career in construction. Jack opened his shop in nineteen thirty two and he and Viola started dating just before she went to Montreal to study at Field Beauty Culture School. This was one of the few beauty schools in Canada that accepted black students. She started studying there in four and he would travel to Montreal by train to visit her. They got married in ninety six, and once Viola got back to Halifax, they were both active in church and community organizations. In n seven, Viola opened Viz Studio of Beauty Culture next to her husband's barbershop, and she immediately developed a dedicated group of clients, some of them traveling from other parts of Canada to see her. Her salon also became a social hub for the neighborhood. People described her as charismatic, optimistic, kind, and deeply devoted to her family. She was also independent and ambitious, and soon she wanted to continue her training, and we will get into that after we paused for a sponsor break. Viola Desmond's first stop in Continuing her education was at Apex College in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she trained under Sarah Spencer Washington. Sarah Spencer Washington, Madam C. J. Walker, and any Turnbow Malone are regarded as three of the primary founders of the black beauty culture industry in North America. All three women started their own salons, developed their own beauty and hygiene products, and established their own schools to train other people, especially other Black women, to support themselves and bolster their communities by establishing their own beauty businesses. This work was connected to the idea of racial uplift. That's an idea originally put forth by figures like W. E. B. Du Boys and Booker T. Washington that the black race could improve its own circumstances from within through things like education, culture, and racial pride. The philosophy of racial uplift and its legacy are complicated. This was rooted in the idea of respectability, and it also had connections to eugenics, including the idea that the most educated, intelligent black people, or the talented tenth should act as guides and leaders for the rest. It also made black people responsible for dismantling white people's racism, and there were proponents of racial uplift and others who criticized the black beauty culture industry, interpreting that industry as reinforcing beauty standards that replicated what was considered attractive in white people. Some of that perception stems from misinformation, though, for example, Madam C. J. Walker is wrongly credited with inventing the hot comb that was really invented by French hairdresser Marcel Gratta in the eighteen seventies. Some of the most popular skin lightning creams and hair straighteners of this era were marketed to black consumers, but they were actually developed and sold by white people, including Dr Fred Palmer, who was a white pharmac this who developed a skin whitener that contained mercury, and a hairdresser that was described as softening hair and straightening kinks. At the same time, lighter skin was generally seen as more attractive than dark skin, and colorism was and of course continues to be widespread. And it's also true that many of the hairstyles these women developed and taught others to do involved straightening people's hair. But the women who founded the black beauty culture industry really didn't interpret what they were doing as a replication of white beauty standards. Instead, it was a chance to help black women bring out their own beauty and to look good and feel good about themselves and see to the unique needs of black people's skin and hair. For generations, white people had tried to rob Black women of their agency over their own bodies through the institution of slavery, and the beauty industry offered a way to reclaim that agency. Many also saw beauty culture as an act of resistance against racism, basically showing white people that Black women were ladies too. So to return to Viola Desmond. In addition to learning more about things like hairdressing and the treatment of scalp conditions, she also learned chemistry and the basics of wig making while at APEX. When she got back to Halifax in y she really wanted to learn more about wig making. She enjoyed it and she was good at it, and she also worked with clients who wanted access to everything from small hairpieces to full custom made wigs. So she went back to the US again, this time for a wig making apprenticeship in New York City. According to Wanda Robson, their mother was so worried about Viola's safety in New York that she sewed her money into her bra before she left. Once Desmond finished her apprenticeship, she went back to Halifax and moved her salon to a larger space, one where she could set up wefting loom for making wigs. It also had space where she could mix and package her line of skin and hair care products. She sold these under the name Cepia by Viola Desmond, and they included hair glosses, oils, and palm aids, as well as face powders and lipsticks designed for people with darker skin. She described her face powder as having a nut brown color and one that was quote especially blended to enhance dark complexions. In four she opened the Desmond School of Beauty Culture, which had five students in its first graduating class. The program expanded over the next two years, growing to about fifteen students at a time, and then these students would go on to establish their own beauty salons and employ other black women at those salons, and Desmond's business was a big success. She earned enough money to buy her own car, which was not common at all for black women at the time. She used this to travel all over Nova Scotia to teach classes, sell her products, and make deliveries, often traveling by herself to do so. As she traveled, her experiences with racism and segregation could really vary from one place to another. While there were some laws on the books in Nova Scotia that related to race in some way, including the school segregation law that we talked about earlier, when it came to public accommodations like movie theaters, hotels, and restaurants, there was no law requiring segregation, but there was no law forbidding discrimination based on race either. There were, however, several court decisions that allowed discrimination by private businesses. The most famous is known as the Christie case. On July eleven six, Fred Christie and Emil King were refused service at the York Tavern in the Forum in Montreal because Christie was black. Christie filed suit, and his lawyer Are argued that York Taverns liquor license meant it had a duty to serve all customers regardless of race. The first court that they appeared before agreed with this, but then on appeal a higher court ruled that quote a merchant or trader is free to carry on his business in the manner that he conceives to be best for that business. Christie appealed that decision, and the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that freedom of commerce outweighed customers right not to be discriminated against. So businesses in Canada had the right to discriminate against customers, but whether they actually did so could really vary. We have already talked about barbershops and beauty salons, beyond that, some restaurants served black customers while others did not. Some hotels rented rooms to black people but not others. Some movie theaters had integrated seating, while others required black people to sit together they're in a specific section. This could also really vary from city to city, and from one business to another within a city, and it could change from one owner or manager to another. On November eight, n Viola Desmond was traveling through New Glasgow, Nova Scotia on her way to Sydney, Nova Scotia, when her car broke down. She was able to get to a mechanic, but the repair was going to take some time, so she got a hotel room and she decided to go see a movie at the Roseland Theater. She didn't go to the movies very often, but she had time she did not have anything else to do. The movie playing was Dark Mirror, starring Olivia to have aland whose performances Desmond had enjoyed in movies that she had seen. Because she was not local, Desmond didn't know that the Roseland Theater segregated its seating by race. White customers sat downstairs while black customers sat upstairs in the balcony. This had been the case for years in some black high school students had been removed from the theater for trying to sit downstairs. New Glasgow resident Carrie Best heard about this and wrote and spoke to the owner, Norman W. Mason, trying to get him to reverse the policy, but he refused, so she and her son went to the theater and tried to get a seat on the main floor, and when they were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, she filed a lawsuit. Much like in the Fred Christie case, the court ruled that the owner had the right to refuse service to anyone, So five years later, Viola Desmond went to the ticket counter at the same theater and asked for a downstairs ticket. The ticket seller, Peggy Mellinson, gave her some change and a ticket for the balcony. Desmond had no reason to think she had been given anything other than what she had asked for, and she tried to go downstairs, but when she handed her ticket to the ticket taker, Prima Davis, and then tried to go inside, David told her she had a balcony ticket. Desmond thought this was just a mistake, and she went back to the counter to correct it, and Melanson told her, quote, I'm not allowed to sell downstairs tickets to you people. It was clear to Desmond what Melonson meant by this, and she decided to sit on the main level of the theater anyway, ignoring Davis's attempt to stop her. Soon, the manager, Henry McNeil approached Desmond and told her to move to the balcony. Desmond pointed out that she had asked for a main floor ticket and that when she realized she had one for the balcony, she had tried to exchange it. She said she needed to sit downstairs because she could not see well from the balcony, and pointed out that there were plenty of available seats. McNeil told her that the theater had the right to segregate its seating and that if she did not leave, he would call the police. When an officer arrived, he told Desmond that if she didn't leave, he would throw her to the theater, based on an affidavit she filed in support of her appeal. Desmond didn't believe he would do this obviously, she knew racism and discrimination existed. She had experienced some overt racism while studying in the United States. She had heard the experiences of her clients at the salon, one of whom was actually carry best. The idea that an officer might physically remove her from the theater when she had done nothing wrong didn't really enter her mind. She stayed where she was. When she refused to move, the officer grabbed her and dragged her into the lobby. She struggled against him, trying to grab onto the door frame as she was pulled past it, and she lost her purse and one of her shoes in the process. Someone handed her lost shoe and her purse to her, and then the officer and the theater manager carried her out to the street. Where she was put into a taxi that took her to the town jail. She was put in a cell and kept there overnight, where she was too terrified to sleep. Viola Desmond was put on trial the very next morning, which we will get to you after a sponsor break. On the morning of November nine, barely twelve hours after she was forcibly taken out of the Roseland theater, Viola Desmond was put on trial. The downstairs ticket at the theater cost forty cents, including a three cent amusement tax, but the upstairs ticket was thirty cents, including a two cent amusement tax, so she was charged with trying to defraud the provincial government of the one cent difference in that tax. The tax was required at movie theaters under Nova Scotia's nineteen fifteen Theaters, Cinematographs and Amusements Act, although it was the theater, not the law, that had set different prices for upstairs and downstairs tickets. This was a private prosecution, with the theater manager bringing the charges. The only legal official present at the trial was the magistrate, Roderick McKay. It wasn't standard procedure at the time to inform people of their rights, and Desmond was not told that she had the right to legal counsel or the right to have the trial postponed until she had actually consulted with a lawyer. No one explained what was happening or what was expected of her. A series of witnesses was called, including the cashier, the ticket taker, and the theater manager, and after each of them was questioned, Desmond was asked if she had any questions. She had no idea she was being asked if she wanted to cross examine these witnesses. She thought she was just being asked if she had understood what they had said. She did understand, so she said she had no questions. When Desmond took the stand herself, she pointed out that she had tried to buy the more expensive ticket, including the additional tax, she had not been trying to evade paying it, but she wasn't given the opportunity to enter any evidence herself, or even told that that was something she could do. Desmond was found guilty and find twenty dollars plus court costs, With those six dollars and costs going to the theater manager. Nobody mentioned Race during these proceedings, but it was clear that the real issue was not a tax. It was her refusal to sit where the black patrons were expected to sit, but that tax was the only thing they could prosecute her for. When Viola Desmond was released and her car was ready, she abandoned the rest of her business trip and went back home. Her husband had grown up in New Glasgow and when she told him what had happened, and he was unsurprised. She saw a doctor about her injuries and he told her she should talk to a lawyer. He also wrote letters about the incident on her behalf to various government officials. Desmond's friends and family were divided about what she should do. Some, including her husband, thought it was best to just let it go. Her friends, per Lene and the Reverend William Oliver, who had helped found the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People, encouraged her to appeal, and the n s a a CP raised money for it. Carry Best, who at this point had become a journalist and a human rights activist, covered Desmond's arrest and trial and appeal process in the newspaper The Clarion, which Best had helped found Sometimes. The Clarion is described as the first newspaper in Nova Scotia with a black editor and publisher, but at least one earlier paper, The Atlantic Advocate, was in print. From nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen. Only a handful of black lawyers were practicing in Nova Scotia, and Desmond chose a white lawyer named Frederick William Bissit. First, he filed suit against Harry McNeil in the Theater on the grounds that Desmond had been assaulted, maliciously prosecuted, and falsely arrested and imprisoned, but for unknown reasons, this suit never made it to trial. In December of nineteen forty six, Visit applied for a writ of cirtiary before Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Maynard Brown Archibald, asking him to quash Desmond's conviction. In Canada, a writ of cercary usually comes into play when a traditional appeal isn't an option for some reason, or when there's just an obvious error that was made in a lower court. Visit argued that the magistrate had not had jurisdiction to convict Desmond. It is not clear why Bisit chose to pursue this course rather than appeal through the lower courts. The deadline for an appeal had passed. It had to be done within ten days of the conviction. He had issued a writ in the civil suit just five days after the conviction, so it doesn't seem like he was just taking too long. It's possible that the appeal deadline passed before it became clear that the civil case wasn't coming to trial. Regardless, Archibald decided against Desmond on January twentieth, ninety seven, saying that the proper procedure would have been an appeal, and that since the magistrate did have jurisdiction, a sortiary process was not available to her. Bessett tried again, this time taking the matter to the full Nova Scotia Supreme Court. The four justices each expressed differing opinions on why, but they all agreed that the case should be dismissed, and that decision was announced on May seventeenth seven. It was clear to it some of the justices that this case really wasn't about a theater tax, although there were virtually no references to race in the written record. In his concurring opinion, Justice W. L. Hall wrote, quote, One wonders if the manager of the theater who laid the complaint was so zealous because of a bona fide belief that there had been an attempt to defraud the Province of Nova Scotia of the sum of one cent or was it a surreptitious endeavor to enforce a Jim Crow rule by misuse of a public statute. Desmond's case had been widely covered in newspapers in Canada and parts of the United States, and this whole process had put a lot of strain on her and her family. People continued to disagree about whether she should have pursued the case, with some feeling like she had drawn unwanted attention to the black community in Nova Scotia. Others instead questioned why Bissett had not tried to make an equal right argument that could have been applied more broadly. Desmond, of course, was deeply disappointed in this outcome. Her marriage had already been strained. Viola was a lot more ambitious than Jack was, and he was increasingly uncomfortable with and frustrated by all her travel and time away from home. But he was also strongly opposed to her decision to go to court. He thought it would stir up trouble and that she should handle it herself through prayer. Sometime after the final court ruling, they separated. Viola gave up her plans to establish beauty franchises all over Canada and started focusing on real estate, buying and fixing up homes to rent them to black families. Eventually, Desmond closed her business and moved first to go to business school in Montreal and then to go to New York City to become an entertainment agent. She made ends meet as she got started in this business by working as a cigarette girl at Small Paradise Club and Arleam, which is also where she had worked her way through her wig making apprenticeship. In nineteen fifty four, which was the year Desmond moved to Montreal, Nova Scotia repealed its legislation that allowed segregation in public schools, although the last segregated school in Nova Scotia did not close until nineteen eighty three. In nineteen fifty nine, Nova Scotia passed the Fair Accommodation Act, which prohibited discrimination in places like movie theaters and restaurants. Other civil rights legislation had already been passed in other parts of Canada, and additional laws followed as black people in Canada advocated for equal rights. Although racism and discrimination continued, Many people in the North End neighborhood, where Desmond had spent most of her life were forced out of their homes or otherwise displaced during urban renewal projects in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and starting in nineteen sixty four, Africville was systematically destroyed. Viola does Men died on February seventh, nineteen sixty five, at the age of fifty. Her cause of death was reported as an intestinal bleed. Although her death seemed really sudden, members of her family had noticed that she seemed unwell when she returned to Halifax following the death of her mother in nineteen sixty three and of her father in nineteen sixty four. In two thousand, the National Film Board of Canada produced a documentary called Journey to Justice, which was focused on black people who had taken civil rights cases to court from the nineteen thirties through the nineteen fifties, including Viola Desmond. That same year, Viola's sister, Wanda Robson, audited a course called the History of Race Relations in North America at what is now Cape Breton University. The professor Dr Graham Reynolds mentioned Viola Desmond during class, at which point Wanda Robson said, that's my sister. I love that. I mean, I hate that it's something their whole fan only had to go through, but I love that. She was just sitting in class and was like, that's my sister. Robson decided to return to college and finish her bachelor's degree at the age of seventy three, graduating in two thousand four, and she started pursuing a formal apology for her sister. She also wrote a book about their family, including talking about her sister and her sister's experience at the Roseland Theater. She called that book Sister to Courage, and that came out in Desmond wound up getting more than an apology. On April fift Lieutenant Governor Mayn Francis issued a Royal Prerogative of Mercy a k A. A free pardon for Viola Desmond. This took place at a ceremony in Halifax, and Nova Scotia Premier Daryl Dexter issued a formal apology as well. A portrait of Desmond was unveiled a few months later and was installed in the Government House ballroom. The same year all of this was happening, the Viola Desmond Chair of Social Justice was established at Cape Breton University. Had Desmond lived to see this, she would have been nine. In Viola Desmond appeared on a Canadian postage stamp. An exhibition on her life and experiences opened at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in ten. In sixteen, it was announced that Viola Desmond would appear on Canadian currency. The ten dollar note bearing her image was released on November eighteen. The book Viola Desmond, Her Life and Times was published in twenty eighteen as well. This was a collaboration between Dr Graham Reynolds and Wander Robson, and then also in twenty eighteen, Desmond was named a National Historic Person in Canada and became the subject of a Google doodle. In February of one, the government repaid Viola Desmond's fine to her sister Wanda. Adjusted for inflation, that was one thousand dollars, which Robson used to fund a scholarship at Cape In University. Wanda Robson died in February of two at the age of Sometimes Viola Desmond is described as the Canadian Rosa Parks, often with the note that Rosa Parks should really be called the United States Viola Desmond, since Desmond refused to leave her seat at the movie theater nine years before, Parks refused to leave her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus, and these two women do have a lot of things in common. They both made an in the moment decision to push back against racism by not leaving their seat. They were both also petite and well dressed, churchgoing women who were very well respected in their communities, which is one of the reasons why Rosa Parks was asked to be a plaintiff in a test case to try to overturn segregation laws in the United States. But this comparison really flattens both women's experiences down to just one moment of refusing to leave a seat, when they both had full lives of very different accomplishments outside of that moment and it's aftermath. Also, it erases the experiences of people who also refused to give up their seat before either Desmond or Parks, including Carrie Best, who we talked about in this episode, and Elizabeth Jennings Graham, who we will have as an upcoming Saturday classic. Yeah, sometimes referred to as nineteenth century Rosa Parks similarly kind of a limited comparison as we talked about in that episode, but we'll be in folks as feeds. Do you have a listener mail? I do? This is from Brianna or possibly Brianna. Uh did not get a chance to write back and ask, but uh, this email begainst Dear Holly and Tracy. I've been meaning to write this email for a while now, so that what I originally was going to write has turned into a couple of things. I'm entering my fifth year in a PhD program setting medieval literature, and it's been a rough year with the pandemic hangover my students and I have been experiencing, and also that whole business of having to write a dissertation. How do you even do that? Anyway? For both Unearthed episodes, I used the episodes as motivation to finish a project, so I just wanted to say thank you for those episodes. I'm an archaeology nerd and I always look forward to them. They're a good motivator to get things done. I hope Tracy's last negative experience putting the episodes together didn't sour her on the experience completely. I also wanted to especially say thanks for including the paper on the medieval hand grenade. I kept waiting for one of you to make a Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke when you were talking about it. I included that paper in a footnote in my chapter about alchemy because the substances they found in the hand grenade are also substances used by alchemists. I don't suggest that the particular object the writers identified as a hand grenade was actually an alchemical vessel. It seems to be the wrong shape, but it seems logical to me that some of those vessels may have been used for that purpose. I did make a Monty Python joke, and the footnote hopefully gets to stay in I also wanted to share a pie recipe that's popular in my family. Piemaking is kind of a tradition in my family, and it's something we take very seriously. I have vivid memories of the back counter and my grandma's kitchen being covered with six or eight pies on holidays, and my aunt and cousin have both worked in food service and their pies are famous in our area of Montana. When I worked at their restaurant one day, this lady who wasn't from the area flagged me down and asked me about the pies. She said, kind of like she had caught me. Are your pies holemade? I said yes, and she added even the crust, and I said yes, ma'am, everything is always homemade. I'm including the recipe for Amish cream pie. No idea where the name came from. I don't think there's an Amish pedigree to it. This one is really popular and will barely last twenty four hours when it's on sale. I wish I could make you one and ship it your way, but pies travel very well. And you said you're moving offices. So again, thanks for the Unearthed episodes and for the podcasts, Brianna uh and so we will stick this pie recipe on our social media. It's very easy, though, because you just mixed together three quarters cup of sugar, two and a half cups of half and half, a quarter teaspoon of salt, three and a half tablespoons of cornstarch heaping or packed and cook that until thick, and then add in half a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of butter, and a tea spoon of vanilla that goes into a pie shehell sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at three fifty for fifteen or twenty minutes until it's bubbly around the edge, and then you let it cool off, store in the fridge. That sounds really delicious. I went down a little rabbit hole about whether it may or may not be Amish in origin. There are a whole lot of Amish pies um, this specific one did not find a reference to. I know there are some foods that are described as Amish that have nothing to do uh with Amish people at all. And just kind of got it fixed with that moniker um because of feelings, basically, So I thought about whether to put a holy hand grenade joke uh in the Unearthed episode we talked about the medieval hand grenade, and I wound up not doing it. So I'm glad I got a chance to just read this email well where it is in there. I kept thinking about that scene and money Python and the Holy Grail as I was reading that part of the unearthed stuff. UM never fear. That whole experience did not sour me on doing Unearthed. It was really what was going on in the world in that moment that made it a frustrating Unearthed process, not the Unearthed thing itself. I think regardless of what I had been working on, it would have been challenging given the amount of chaos that was currently happening at that moment. Uh. Speaking of chaos, we've also gotten a few tweets from people who point out that the word meaning chaos in Italian is pronounced cows approximately. Um. I didn't get to that in my frantic cramming of Italian on duo lingo before we went to Italy, So thanks to folks who have tweeted about that. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast where at History podcast that I Heart radio dot com. We're all over social media at Missed in History, which is where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can't subscribe to our show on the I Heart Radio app or wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts from i Heeart Radio, Visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.