Freedom Ride to be re-enacted by university students for 50th anniversary - Australia

Using the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement in America, The 1965 Freedom Rise in Australia, intended to fight for the rights of Aboriginal people. 

Article from the Guardian -

More than a hundred former and current students and staff members from the University of Sydney will make several stops across regional New South Wales in a reenactment of the historic Freedom Ride on its 50th anniversary.

The 1965 Freedom Ride was a major milestone in the civil rights of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people in Australia. The original rides visited towns such as Walgett, Kempsey and Moree, and highlighted the rampant racial segregation and discrimination against Indigenous Australians of the time.

The ride was led by one of the first Indigenous students at the University of Sydney, Charles Perkins, and joined by around 30 other, predominantly non-Indigenous students. It precipitated a range of significant institutional, legal and social changes regarding the rights of Indigenous people in Australia, including a 1967 referendum removing excessive state-level power over Aboriginal lives.

The anniversary celebration on 18 February is being spearheaded by Perkins’ daughter Rachel, a documentary filmmaker (First Contact, Redfern Now), in conjunction with the university. Some of the original riders will also take part, including Jim Spigelman, a former chief justice of the NSW supreme court and current chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Professor Bob Morgan of the University of Newcastle was 16 when the Freedom Ride came to his hometown of Walgett. He describes Walgett at the time as severely segregated, with Indigenous people only allowed to sit in the “two-bob seats” at the front of the cinema, forbidden from swimming in the public pool and women prohibited from trying on dresses in stores.

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He recalls Perkins addressed the crowd on the steps of a local RSL that only allowed Indigenous people entry on one day of the year, Anzac day. “I’ll never forget what Charlie said, how he made me feel,” says Morgan. “I knew things were not right in our town but as a 16-year-old, how do you articulate that? Then someone like Charlie comes along.”

Stirred by Perkins, Morgan would later move to Sydney and pursue a career in education. Currently living on the central coast, he will return to Walgett for the anniversary ride, which along with stops in Dubbo, Moree and Kempsey, will include a number of free public concerts, community barbecues, art exhibitions and sporting events.

Several staff members of Sydney University will also take part, including deputy vice-chancellor of Indigenous strategy and services, Professor Shane Houston. The university’s involvement follows recent controversy in which poetry professor Barry Spurr was suspended for making racist comments in an email, including calling Indigenous Australians “human rubbish tips”.

When asked about the incident, Houston said it was more important to focus on the work of the institution than the comments of one individual. He said the anniversary ride illustrated how the culture within the university had changed. “Charles said it was like ‘pulling teeth’ getting the university involved [in the original ride], they didn’t want to be involved,” recalls Houston. “This time around, it’s the university community that is part of this.”

This year’s ride will once again be led by an Indigenous student from the university, Kyol Blakeney, the president of the university’s student representative council, and the first Aboriginal man to be in that role (an Indigenous woman Dr Heidi Norman held the post in 1994). Houston says all participants have the full support of the university, which will also be providing buses for the ride.

Joining the convoy are two Australian musicians, singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and country music star Troy Cassar-Daley, for a performance in Moree. The University of Sydney will also host its own commemorative concert starring the two musicians on 20 March.

In a piece of historical footage posted by Perkins’s production company Blackfella Films, Charles Perkins is filmed reflecting on the meaning of the original ride:

Freedom Ride was about justice, equality, people getting on with each other, reality. What was really happening in this country, not what people thought was happening. And what was really happening is that we had a group of people in this country who were living at extreme disadvantage. Who are second-class citizens to the white people in the country. Who are not participating in the wealth of this country. Who are not sharing in much of its happiness and certainly a lot of its hardship.

His daughter hopes the anniversary ride will illustrate how the country has progressed. “Obviously there’s still issues, but I think we’ve come a huge way since then,” says Perkins. “Like the 1965 ride, this Freedom Ride should draw attention to the fact that our constitution is still a racist document and that it needs to acknowledge Aboriginal people.”