"Dresden’s Color Bar Still Up, Rap Daley Failure To Apply Law"

"Dresden’s Color Bar Still Up, Rap Daley Failure To Apply Law"

Human Rights movements in Dresden, 1954

This is a photograph of a Telegram article written by Pat McNenly (including pictures by Leo Harrison) in 1954, centering around the action of Bromley Armstrong and Ruth Lor in testing the recently enacted Equal Accommodations Act of that year during a sit-in in Dresden, Ontario. Clearly, Armstrong being a Jamaican immigrant and Lor being a Chinese Canadian shows a human rights struggle based on the interconnection of these two marginalized diasporic groups. It is not simply that Armstrong and Lor have been categorized as the same type of activist, or that they happen to both be campaigning for equal rights in Dresden out of happenstance. They made a conscious choice to collaborate their efforts on obtaining rights and laws which would universally help marginalized diaspora in Canada.

Leo Harrison, Photographer.

Pat McNenly, Writer.

The image is from the following website:

Harrison, Leo. “Dresden’s Color Bar Still Up, Rap Daley Failure to Apply Law.” Published by The Telegram, October 30, 1954. Photograph. Dresden, Ontario. The Long Road to Justice: Reflections on Human Rights in Canada, accessed November 3, 2025. https://humanrights.apps01.yorku.ca/blog/2009/07/dresdens-color-bar-still-up-rap-daley-failure-to-apply-law/.

York University Archives, Long Road To Justice (current holders)

The Telegram (original publisher)

1954

Likely All Rights Reserved

JPG file

English

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