Charles Perkins Freedom Rides

Perkins was born in Alice Springs in 1936. His early education was at school in Adelaide. A skilled soccer player, Perkins played professional soccer in England from 1957 to 1960. Having turned down an offer to try out for Manchester United, he returned to Australia to coach a local Adelaide team. Here he became vice president of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines. Perkins moved to Sydney in 1962 and in 1963 became captain and coach of the Pan Hellenic Club. to redress it. The tour was also a response to the criticism that Australians were quick to champion the work of Martin Luther King and the United States civil rights movement but slow to do anything to redress racism in Australia. In the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans led a program of protest and civil disobedience against racist policies that denied people their civil rights. In Australia, the activists of the Freedom Ride were concerned with: †¢ Aborigines’ appalling living and health conditions †¢ Aborigines being forced to live on reserves outside country towns †¢ local authorities denying Aborigines access to facilities like hotels, clubs and swimming pools †¢ the fact that Aborigines were not counted as citizens in their own land. The ? rst step in each town was to survey both indigenous and non-indigenous people to ? nd out about the living, education and health conditions of local Aborigines. If there was an issue of blatant discrimination, the Freedom Riders took action to publicise and hopefully overturn it. Perkins admired the efforts of the US civil rights activist Martin Luther King, and he encouraged SAFA members to read King’s ‘letter from Birmingham Gaol’. Source 10. 1. 1 Source 10. 1. 2 A young Charles Perkins receives a trophy as captain–coach of Adelaide Croatia football club, 1961. In 1963 he also began studies at Sydney University, where he was a founding member of Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA), later becoming president. On 12 February 1965, he and fellow student Jim Spigelman led about 28 others on a 14-day, 3200-kilometre bus tour of rural New South Wales that became known as the Freedom Ride. THE 1965 FREEDOM RIDE The tour targeted towns like Walgett, Moree and Kempsey, which had the reputation of being racist towards their Aboriginal inhabitants, and included some like Lismore that were supposed to have better records. The aim was to raise awareness of discrimination against Aboriginal people and to try Photograph showing the Freedom Riders with the bus that took them on their month-long campaign 44 RETROactive 2 CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP FOCUS Perkins was particularly interested in King’s emphasis on ‘non-violent direct action’ and establishing ‘creative tension’ by dramatically highlighting examples of discrimination so that people could not continue to ignore them. Whereas the 1961 Freedom Rides in the United States had speci? cally focused on the desegregation of interstate transport, in Australia the focus was on the desegregation of leisure facilities in country towns and information-gathering on race relations in rural New South Wales. The ? st two stops were at Wellington and Gullargambone, where the Aboriginal people surveyed spoke of their need for housing and access to fresh water on the reserves. Racial discrimination was a major problem and not one that th e local indigenous people felt they could work with SAFA to ? ght. The bus moved on to Walgett. who had been murdered on a country road while campaigning in Alabama. They saw four or ? ve cars surrounding them and were relieved to ? nd that these were driven by local Aborigines who had come out to offer protection. The other trucks and cars disappeared. A journalist itnessed the incident and it became headline news in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Mirror and the Australian. Mirror reporter Gerald Stone and his editor Zell Rabin highlighted the parallels between the racist attitudes and behaviour they observed from their work as journalists in the United States and the racist attitudes and behaviour in New South Wales. Moree The bus moved on to Moree and a new issue of discrimination — a 1955 council by-law prohibiting Aborigines and those with ‘a mixture of Aboriginal Walgett blood’ from using (except during school hours) the local artesian baths and swimming pool. Other In Walgett, the local RSL club refused entry to examples of racism in the town included the refusal Aborigines, including Aboriginal ex-servicemen who to allow Aboriginal patients to share hospital facilhad participated in World Wars I and II. They were ities with white patients and the insistence that occasionally allowed entry on Anzac Day. Perkins they be buried in a part of the local cemetery that led the Freedom Riders in forming a picket line was separate from the section for white people. outside the club (see source 10. 1. 3). They held up SAFA’s protest began with a demonstration outposters proclaiming ‘Aborigines also fought’, ‘Bullets side the council building. They then got families’ did not discriminate’ and ‘Good enough for Tobruk, permission to take eight children and try to gain why not Walgett RSL? ’ Perkins addressed the crowd entry to the pool. Charles Perkins got more children of onlookers to try and convince the RSL committee from the reserve. The manager refused to sell them members to change their policy. Members of the entry coupons, saying ‘darkies not allowed in’. A local Aboriginal community joined in. arge crowd gathered and after an hour the manThe Anglican minister evicted the students from ager, four police and the local mayor came up with their lodgings in the church hall because of people’s another answer: Aboriginal children were allowed hostility to their actions. A line of cars and trucks in as long as they were ‘clean’. The children went followed the bus out of Walgett. One of the trucks forced the bus off the road. The scene reminded the swimming and the Freedom Riders left Moree students of the three American student activists thinking that the ban had been overturned. The mayor and the pool anager re-imposed the ban. Three days later, about six children from the Source 10. 1. 3 Moree Reserve joined the Freedom Riders in another attempt to break the ban. They tried without success for over three hours. A crowd of about 500 angry locals, including a group from the pub across the road, shouted abuse, spat at them and threw tomatoes and rotten eggs at them and the bus. Perkins later said he feared for his life during this incident. The confrontation received huge press coverage and also television coverage from a BBC crew and a team from Channel Seven’s investigative program Seven Days. Many journalists made comparisons between the racist attitudes shown in Moree and those evident towards African Americans in A photograph of the picket line formed by the Freedom Riders outside the United States. Walgett RSL club in 1965 245 CHAPTER 10: PEOPLE POWER Finally, the police escorted the Freedom Riders out of Moree. The bus continued on to Lismore, Bowraville and Kempsey before returning to Sydney. Source 10. 1. 4 An extract from Gerald Stone’s newspaper account of the Freedom Riders’ experiences in Moree 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 ? 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 William Lloyd, pitched into the battle, grabbing students by the scruff of their necks and hurling them out of the way. Throughout the ? ghting a barrage of eggs and rotten fruit rained on the students. Mr Jim 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. Lyall Munro, one of the Aboriginal children who swam in the Moree pool as part of the Freedom Ride protest, was later inspired by these events to become an activist himself. In March 2004, he was a spokesperson for the Aboriginal community at Redfern following the death of teenager T. J. Hickey. He spoke out against the overpolicing and police mistreatment of Aboriginal youth in the Redfern area. Source 10. 1. 6 Source 10. 1. 5 A photograph showing Charles Perkins being led away from the Moree pool in February 1965 after locals confronted the student demonstrators and violence broke out ONGOING EFFORTS The Freedom Riders had an impact on the local Aboriginal communities they met during the trip, and they did not want to abandon them when they returned to Sydney. In August 1965, SAFA campaigned with the Walgett branch of the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) to end segregation at the Luxury Theatre and the Oasis Hotel. The APA continued and eventually won a long struggle to achieve this. Students kept up the visits to country towns, going to Bega, Dareton, Bowraville and Coonamble, where they publicised many instances of racism and pressured communities and authorities to change their ways. Photograph of Charles Perkins and local children in the Moree pool, 1965. Perkins’s simple act of swimming in the pool was a stand against racial discrimination. 246 RETROactive 2 CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP FOCUS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHARLES PERKINS AND THE FREEDOM RIDE The Freedom Ride occurred at a time when Australians were beginning to see the injustice of obvious examples of racism like those evident in the segregation of facilities in many country towns. It generated discussion and debate throughout Australia about the plight of indigenous communities, and media coverage stimulated national and international pressure for reform. Through the Freedom Ride, Charles Perkins became a national ? gure and a role model for Aboriginal people throughout Australia. His Freedom Ride showed Aboriginal Australians that non-violent action could result in change. His organisation of protests and public debate demonstrated both his leadership skills and his willingness to take action to demand change — characteristics that continued throughout his life. The Freedom Ride became part of the campaign movement that resulted in the 1967 referendum (see page 190) giving citizenship to Aboriginal people — a result supported by 89 per cent of voters. The two events and Australia’s economic prosperity at the time stimulated expectations that governments would intervene to address problems of inequality. This process began in 1972 when the Whitlam government took of? ce (see page 272). In the late 1960s, student activism focused more on protest against Australia’s involvement in war in Vietnam. Charles Perkins continued throughout his life to campaign for Aboriginal rights. He protested against the reluctance of authorities to allow self-determination for Aboriginal Australians and against government failure to effectively address the inequalities in Aboriginal Australians’ access to education, health, housing, employment and the law. Charles Perkins died of kidney failure on 18 October 2000. He was granted a state funeral — an honour usually given only to those who have held signi? ant government of? ce. ABC television broadcast the funeral, and traf? c in George Street Sydney came to a temporary standstill as a crowd gathered outside Sydney Town Hall to watch on a large screen the funeral service taking place inside. Check your understanding 1. Write a paragraph of 10 to 15 lines to summarise the Freedom Ride. Use the ‘W’ questions (what, when, where, who, how and why) to guide the selection of your information. 2. What impact did the Freedom Ride have on different groups at the time? 3. What were the results of the Freedom Ride? Using sources 1. In what ways do source 10. 1. 1 and the description of his early sporting career indicate that Charles Perkins might have had special qualities? 2. Use source 10. 1. 2 to describe the participants in the Freedom Ride. 3. What message were the protesters in source 10. 1. 3 trying to convey through their placards outside Walgett RSL Club? 4. What does source 10. 1. 4 indicate about how people in Moree responded to SAFA’s campaign? 5. What captions could you create for source 10. 1. 5 to express: (a) its signi? cance to Charles Perkins (b) the attitudes of the pool’s manager? . What stage of the Freedom Ride protest at Moree does the photo in source 10. 1. 6 seem to be showing? What aspect of the protest does the photo not reveal? 7. Describe the scene in source 10. 1. 7, commenting on the diversity of faces among the mourners, the signi? cance of the occasion and what it indicates about public feeling and respect for Charles Perkins’s life and achievements. Researching and communicating 1. Use the Internet to review some of the obituaries written at the time of Charles Perkins’s death. Select from them what seem to be the most signi? ant features of his life and work. Use these as the basis of a brief biography of Perkins suitable for publication in a dictionary of biography. 2. What would you have done? Imagine yourself in 1965 as either a Sydney University student or a resident of one of the country towns that the Freedom bus visited. How would you have responded to SAFA and the Freedom Ride? Give reasons for your answer.