The Freedom Ride 1965, Australia
The Freedom Ride of 1965 was a significant event in Australia, where a group of student activists embarked on a fifteen-day bus tour across New South Wales to raise awareness about the living conditions and systemic racism faced by Aboriginal Australians. Organized by the Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA) and led by Charles Perkins, the first Aboriginal Australian to attend the University of Sydney, the tour involved staging protests and demonstrations in various towns. The activists aimed to highlight issues such as discrimination, particularly focusing on the segregation faced by Aboriginal people in public spaces, such as the Moree swimming pool, which became a focal point of their protests.
As they traveled, the Freedom Riders faced hostility and violence from some local residents, which drew national and international media attention to their cause. The heightened awareness spurred public discourse on Aboriginal rights and prompted the Australian government to consider constitutional amendments to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Freedom Ride remains a pivotal moment in the struggle for Indigenous rights in Australia, illustrating the impact of grassroots activism in challenging social injustices. The event is commemorated today, reflecting on both the progress made and the ongoing challenges faced by Aboriginal communities.
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The Freedom Ride 1965, Australia
The 1965 Freedom Ride was a fifteen-day bus trip taken by activists in New South Wales, Australia. The activists did so to draw attention to the living conditions of Aboriginal Australians and the racism they faced. The Freedom Riders visited multiple towns where they staged protests and demonstrations. The Freedom Ride raised awareness of racism and discrimination and forced open many doors. It was covered by the international press and prompted the federal government to hold a referendum to amend the Constitution to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the national census.
Background
British colonization of Australia began in 1788 with eleven ships of convicts, military personnel, and leadership. The penal colony was organized as a self-supporting agricultural work camp, but the convicts had no experience with farming, and the soil and climate were far different from what they knew.
As the population of the colony increased, the Europeans pushed the Aboriginal people off the land where they had been living for tens of thousands of years. In the early years, the focus of British troops was to keep the convicts from revolting and suppress any resistance from Aboriginal peoples.
Fighting with Aboriginal peoples mainly occurred along the edge of the frontiers of British settlement as colonizers advanced and in remote areas of central and western Australia. After several decades, local authorities relied more on armed police and civilian militias to address internal conflicts.
Initial contacts between Indigenous people and colonizers were usually peaceful and often welcoming. However, as the newcomers established settlements, their way of life began to infringe upon those of the Aboriginal peoples in the area, and it became obvious that the land could not support both groups. Often grievances between individuals escalated to murder, retaliation, and eventually open warfare.
Indigenous persons had no rights when dealing with colonizers. Settlers in Tasmania were authorized to shoot Aboriginal people in the early nineteenth century. By the 1810s, the government was moving Aboriginal people to mission stations, where they were forced to work for low wages and required to adopt European customs and language. The government had established a policy of assimilation that required many children to be sent to boarding schools. Throughout the century, hundreds of Aboriginal people were massacred. So-called Aborigines Protection Boards were empowered to remove children from their families, and from the late 1890s to the 1970s, the chief officer of the Native Welfare board was the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children, regardless of whether their parents were alive.
Aboriginal Australians were not viewed as members of Australian society for much of the twentieth century. Most were denied the right to vote in federal elections until the 1960s by laws crafted to prevent them from participating. For example, the Northern Territory Welfare Ordinance of 1957 declared that almost all Aboriginal people were wards of the state and thus ineligible to vote. Various regulations permitted them to seek Australian citizenship. For example, they had to prove that they did not associate with their communities.
As a result of these and other forms of persecution and oppression, activists began forming organizations to pressure government at all levels to recognize the rights of Aboriginal peoples. During the 1960s, many Australian students who supported the American civil rights movement were inspired to use some of the same tactics, notably civil disobedience, to address racial oppression. Some individuals founded organizations such as the Black Power Movement in Australia. Students at the University of Sydney formed Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA) and organized a bus tour and a series of demonstrations called the Freedom Rides.
Overview
Charles Perkins, the first Aboriginal Australian admitted to the University of Sydney, was a founder of SAFA and an organizer of the Freedom Ride demonstrations. Organizers recruited students, members of the press, and interested community members to join the bus tour and inform the media of the itinerary and goals of the Freedom Ride. The bus was to stop in various towns in rural New South Wales and visit Aboriginal communities, where the activists would highlight the appalling conditions in which many people had to live.
The first few stops of the Freedom Ride were uneventful and little noticed. Then the group arrived in Walgett and began a protest of a veterans’ hall. While many Aboriginal people had served in the Australian military during World Wars I and II, most veterans’ clubs, including the one in Walgett, denied them membership. Walgett also was known for other acts of racism. For example, Aboriginal women were not permitted to try on clothing in the women’s dress shop because the owner feared White women would not buy clothing if they believed that it had been worn by Black people. The SAFA protesters held signs with slogans such as “Aborigines also fought.” The activists were abused by townspeople who spit at them, tore their signs, and screamed at them. At night a man rammed the bus with his truck.
After the activists endured abuses in Walgett, print reporters began covering SAFA’s stops. At Moree, the activists were harassed as they tried to desegregate a community swimming pool by buying tickets for local Aboriginal children, who were only permitted in the pool during high school swimming classes and were scrubbed down before they could enter the water. The town’s theater, town hall, soccer fields, and veterans’ club were also segregated. At the pool, local people jeered at the demonstrators and hurled slurs at the children. Someone punched a Freedom Rider. Finally, Perkins and two other Freedom Riders met with the mayor and three council members. They agreed access to the pool would only be restricted based on health. As the Freedom Riders walked to the bus, local people spit and threw rotten fruit, eggs, rocks, and bottles at them.
After Moree, television news began to cover the story. At some stops the bus was pelted with mud and hate messages were scratched into the paint, but the group persisted. Even the students were surprised at the depth of discrimination in Australia. While they knew, for example, that the Moree pool banned Aboriginal people, they learned this was a formal council resolution and not simply a custom. Because of the violence against the Freedom Riders, the country became aware of such practices as well.
In February 2015 for the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Ride, a reenactment of the bus tour visited many of the sites where protests had taken place. Among the group were some original riders, members of Perkins’s family, and Sydney University students. Activists noted the changes to government policies in Australia since 1965 but pointed out that work remained to be done.
Bibliography
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Tan, Monica. “Fifty Years On, Freedom Ride Again Holds Up a Mirror to White Australia.” The Guardian, 17 Feb. 2015, www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/18/freedom-ride-2015-turning-back-the-clock-while-looking-to-the-future. Accessed 12 June 2023.
Tan, Monica. “Freedom Ride Returns to Walgett, the Town Where the RSL Banned Black Diggers.” The Guardian, 19 Feb. 2015, www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/20/freedom-ride-walgett-remembers-when-charles-perkins-came-to-town. Accessed 12 June 2023.
Tan, Monica, and Freddy McConnell. “Freedom Ride: Revisiting the Dip in the Pool That Changed a Segregated Town.” The Guardian, 20 Feb. 2015, www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/21/freedom-ride-revisiting-the-dip-in-the-pool-that-changed-a-segregated-town. Accessed 12 June 2023.
“Timeline: 1800’s.” New South Wales Department of Education, 2000, racismnoway.com.au/about-racism/timeline/timeline-1800s/. Accessed 12 June 2023.