FREEDOM RIDES - AUS

Charismatic Leader University Educated Handsome Articulate Elite Sportsman Started revolution

http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/freedom-ride-blood-brothers/clip1/

CHARLES PERKINS

Student Action for Aborigines was formed during 1964 and set about raising money for the Freedom Ride. We decided to visit NSW towns with the worst reputation for discrimination and conduct a survey to uncover what Aboriginal people wanted, and learn about white people’s att itudes towards them. Charlie Perkins and Arts/Law student J im Spigelman – now Chief Justice of NSW – researched the towns we would visit . Most of the 11 women and 22 men who signed up for the trip were in their late teens. Our aim was to confront and highlight, without violence, racial discrimination wherever it occurred.

Diary of Ann Curthoys - Freedom Rider

AUSTRALIAN FREEDOM RIDE

1965 Group of students from the University of SydneyFormed Student Action for Aborigines Charles Perkins – chairmanPeaceful demonstrations – influence of MLK.jnr Two week bus journey Northern & North Western NSW

AUSTRALIAN FREEDOM RIDE

“Social justice is what faces you in the morning. It is awakening in a house with adequate water supply, cooking facilities and sanitation. It is the ability to nourish your children and send them to school where their education not only equips them for employment but reinforces their knowledge and understanding of their cultural inheritance. It is the prospect of genuine employment and good health: a life of choices and opportunity, free from discrimination .“

Mick Dodson, Annual Report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, 1993.

WHAT ARE THEY RIDING FOR?

Freedom Until 1969, state-run Aboriginal

Protection or Welfare Boards controlled and supervised the lives of Indigenous Australians. These boards, could decide: where Indigenous people could live, whom they might marry or have

relationships with and where and how their children could be raised.

which jobs Indigenous people could have.

what property Indigenous people could own.

where people could travel who they could visit.

WHAT ARE THEY RIDING FOR?

Challenge PerceptionsAustralian fi lm consistently portrays indigenous

Australians as victims of ‘the system’Rarely are Indigenous people portrayed in

conventional, urban domestic scenarios

Jedda, 1955 Rabbit Proof Fence, 2002

WHAT ARE THEY RIDING FOR?

Media Exposure"White Australians basically are

racist. Racism stems from what you see on TV. Not seeing an Aboriginal family in these productions is part of that. It's all right to have a black American family in there, that's fine, but not a black Australian. But you can't paint a black picture if you only use white paint “.

Ernie Dingo, Actor/Comedian, in ‘My Kind of People, Achievement and Identity and Aboriginality', 1994.

WHAT ARE THEY RIDING FOR?

Although Rolf de Heere’s acclaimed 10 Canoes (2006) was a collaborative work between the Indigenous Australians in the fi lm and himself, it stil l shows Aboriginals as a people untouched by modernity.

The new TV series Redfern (2012), is a signifi cant shift away from this perspective

PERCEPTIONS ARE SLOW TO CHANGE

Expose racism MOREE, Saturday. - Mob violence

exploded here today as student freedom riders were attacked by a crowd crazed with race hate. White women spat on girl students and screamed fi lthy words as the students tried to win Aboriginal children admission to the town baths. Several people were arrested and the town's mayor, Alderman Wil l iam Lloyd, pitched into the battle, grabbing students by the scruff of their necks and hurl ing them out of the way. Throughout the fi ghting a barrage of eggs and rotten fruit rained on the students. Mr J im Spigelman, a 19-year-old student from Maroubra, was smacked to the ground while the 500 strong crowd roared its approval.

Sunday Mirror, 21 February 1965.

WHAT ARE THEY RIDING FOR?

“I was an ABC journalist and I had gone on the Freedom Ride, albeit mostly in my own time, with ABC agreement. I was also a part time student, and a member of SAFA. I held the biased view that it was wrong to discriminate against people on the basis of race. My real crime, of course, was not being biased against racism, but making my view public. No one in the ABC wanted to face the issue, and fi nd a way of dealing with it. It was felt best to sweep it under the carpet………I was the only journalist present when the bus was run off the road in Walgett. I had the recordings. I had a scoop. But the ABC didn't want to know. They would suppress the recordings for thirteen years……..”

Darce Cassidy Freedom Rider

DARCE CASSIDY

News Coverage:While Darce Cassidy has issues with the ABC, other

major news outlets leapt at the story.

• The Daily Mirror sent reporter Gerry Stone and photographer Neville Whitmarsh to join the bus.

• Channel 7 sent Peter Westaway and a fi lm crew. • The Sydney Morning Herald reporter who joined

the bus won a Walkley Award for his coverage.

WHAT DID THEY ACHIEVE?

All iances with Aboriginal groups and success desegregating rural communities

In the weeks following we were struck by a cartoon by Bruce Petty in The Austral ian. It showed a couple of Aborigines looking forlornly around their collection of huts as the students disappeared in a cloud of dust.

It was clear that we could not just go back to our studies and leave things as they were. All iances were formed with Aboriginal groups in some of the towns we had visited.

Walgett formed a branch of the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) .

• Activity centred around attempts to desegregate the Luxury Theatre, and the Oasis Hotel.

• After a long struggle, led now by the APA, the cinema was desegregated. So too was the Oasis hotel. Ironically, the Aboriginal community later purchased the Oasis.

WHAT DID THEY ACHIEVE?

Inspiration for Indigenous people to fi ght injustice in their communities Lyall Munro Jr from Moree – an Aboriginal activist • He said that the Freedom Ride was the event that changed his

life .• Thirteen years earl ier, aged 14, he had been one of the children taken

to swim in the Moree baths.

Munro explained the impact of the Freedom Ride on him and his community. They had always realised the injustice of their treatment, but that was all they had ever known . That was just the way things were. You can't fi ght City Hall . Then the students came, and the ban was l i fted. City Hall , in the person of the Moree Council , had backed down. When the students left, the ban came back. But it was too late. Lyall Munro and his friends had seen that change was possible. Now they would lead the struggle . A spark had started a bushfi re.

Darce Cassidy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Biy1fJXTGQ

WHAT DID THEY ACHIEVE?

‘Yes’ Vote in the 1967 Referendum

Two years after the Freedom Ride in 1967, Australians voted in a referendum.

91% of Australians voted to:

Include aboriginal people in the census

To allow the commonwealth government to make laws for aboriginal people and not the states.

WHAT DID THEY ACHIEVE?