The original Freedom Ride was a two-week bus trip by students from the University of Sydney. It took place in February 1965, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King’s examples of non‑violent direct action. The students travelled to country towns around NSW, to protest discrimination against Aboriginal people, particularly their exclusion from facilities such as swimming pools, clubs and cinemas, and from houses in town.
At the time, the government was promoting policies of assimilation, which meant social inclusion. Habits of racism and segregation were, however, deeply entrenched, especially in country towns, where most whites thought of the Aboriginal people who lived on the outskirts as intruders who had to be kept out, severely circumscribed and controlled.
By the mid‑1960s, many Aboriginal people were demanding a change. They wanted recognition, respect and genuinely equal treatment, with full access to decent housing, jobs, education and community facilities. They also wanted to retain their identity as Aboriginal people, with a strong system of kinship and connection to their own country. During the 1960s the Aboriginal rights movement grew, acquiring strong leaders and attracting support from many non‑Aboriginal people.
STUDENT RADICALISM EMERGES
One of these leaders was Charles Perkins, who had enrolled at the University of Sydney in 1963, along with Gary Williams, a Gumbaynggir man. The men helped to unite two emerging forces that were beginning to change Australian society: the Aboriginal rights movement and student radicalism. I witnessed this change when starting my Arts degree at the University that year.
During 1964 there was increasing student activity on issues of racial equality, such as a massive demonstration in support of African‑American civil rights. Stung by an observer’s query about why they were focusing their attention on this cause when there was similar prejudice at home, the students discussed how best to support Aboriginal people and oppose racism.
They decided to hold a Freedom Ride, modelled on the successful 1961 Freedom Rides in the United States, to visit country towns known as hotspots of discriminatory behaviour.
When the Freedom Ride bus left Sydney on 12 February 1965, there were 29 students on board, including Charles Perkins. Gary Williams and several others joined later. Altogether, 33 students were involved, 11 of them women. The average age was just 19.
CONFRONTATION IN WALGETT
The Freedom Ride travelled to Orange, Well-ington and Dubbo without incident, gathering information but staging no protests. In Walgett the students decided to target the local RSL club, as it was known to exclude Aboriginal ex-servicemen, sometimes even on Anzac Day.
Charles Perkins recognised the symbolic significance of this exclusion. It was important not just to Aboriginal people that their war service be acknowledged, but also to non‑Indigenous Australians, who would more easily recognise discrimination when it applied to ex-servicemen.
The line of students holding up placards outside the Walgett RSL Club attracted huge crowds, leading to much public argument and speech‑making. When the students left town, the son of a local grazier attempted to run their bus off the road. Unfortunately for the disgruntled townsfolk, a cadet journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald had just joined the bus, and as a result the incident was given full coverage in the city newspapers.
EXCLUSION IN MOREE
After Walgett, several more journalists joined the bus, resulting in massive media coverage.
They had plenty to cover at the next town, Moree, where Aboriginal people, except for schoolchildren during school hours, were being excluded from the council‑owned swimming pool. To draw attention to this inequity, they took a group of Aboriginal children to the pool. The party was admitted in order to avoid a confrontation, and later left town, believing that council management had agreed to desegregate the pool. When they learned this was not the case, they returned a few days later. This time, they were surrounded by a hostile crowd and subjected to considerable verbal abuse and some physical violence.
In an increasingly tense atmosphere, the students met with council representatives to find a solution. The council members agreed to abolish the regulation excluding Aboriginal people from the pool, if the students promised to leave town immediately. The Freedom
Ride continued to Lismore, Bowraville and Kempsey, holding several demonstrations. In Bowraville the focus was the cinema, which the proprietor later closed rather than desegregate. In Kempsey the target was another council‑owned pool that excluded
Aboriginal people. All the while the public was bombarded with media stories about the poor conditions under which Aboriginal people lived. Across the country, some serious soul-searching was taking place.
FAR-REACHING RESULTS
The Moree and Kempsey pools were desegregated, and so too (eventually) was the Walgett RSL Club. Charles Perkins became
a well-known Aboriginal leader, and student support for Indigenous rights continued to grow. many other campaigns followed, such as ‘Vote Yes’ during the 1967 Referendum, wage equality for pastoral workers and campaigns for land rights. The aftershocks continue to this day.
There are many forms of commemoration: plaques at the Moree Pool and the Bowraville picture theatre, Rachel Perkins and Ned Landers’ film, Freedom Ride, the film Freedom Rides 40 Years On (produced by Oliver Lawrance and ReconciliACTION, see www. antar.org.au/ freedom_rides_40_years_on), Charles Perkins’ autobiography, Peter Read’s biography of him, and my own book, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers.
The Freedom Ride was retraced in 2005 by university students, both Indigenous and non‑Indigenous, and again in February 2011 by year 10–12 students, who were mostly Indigenous – proof of its enduring legacy. The meaning of this event changes all the time – as historical events do whenever people seek to connect past to present. Our memories of the Freedom Ride will continue to change, along with Australian society and the aspirations of Indigenous people.
Ann Curthoys is an ARC Professorial Fellow in History at the University of Sydney, and the author of Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (Allen and Unwin, 2002). Some of her Freedom Ride materials, including her diary, can be read at www1.aiatsis.gov.au/ exhibitions/ freedomride/start.htm
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