Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Daddy and I'm Doublina Chuk reporting, and we
Speaker 1: are still talking about the Freedom Ride. So we've been
Speaker 1: talking about them now for a little while, but we've
Speaker 1: been talking about the freedom rides that took place in
Speaker 1: the American South in nineteen sixty one. And just in
Speaker 1: case you missed those earlier episodes, that was about groups
Speaker 1: of protesters, black and white, male and female, from all
Speaker 1: over the country who rode buses through Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and most notably through Alabama and Mississippi to test laws
Speaker 1: that were already in place. But we're large largely overridden
Speaker 1: by local Jim Crow traditions. And one thing we kept
Speaker 1: emphasizing throughout those episodes was the press coverage of the rides,
Speaker 1: especially the photos. People across the U saw these images
Speaker 1: of beaten up students, a bus on fire, and violent
Speaker 1: mobs going up against non violent protesters. But the thing
Speaker 1: is is that people around the world saw those images too,
Speaker 1: not just in the US, even all the way in Australia,
Speaker 1: where they really struck a chord. Australian society was also
Speaker 1: segregated along racial lines, since the Aboriginal and the tourist
Speaker 1: Straight Islander Australians were essentially second class citizens, underserved in
Speaker 1: housing and healthcare, ineligible for federal benefits, and often without
Speaker 1: legal rights for their own children. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the part that most people know about Aboriginal people, that
Speaker 1: loss of their children is still in generation. But in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and the early sixties, campaigns for Aboriginal
Speaker 1: rights were starting to gain ground in Australia, but the
Speaker 1: fact remained that many Australians in the larger cities just
Speaker 1: weren't really aware of how bad discrimination and how bad
Speaker 1: conditions were in the smaller interior towns and on the reservation.
Speaker 1: So a publicity fueled event like an Australian version of
Speaker 1: the Freedom Rides would be possibly just the thing to
Speaker 1: kind of shake them up, wake them up a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: But we can't act as though there was just this
Speaker 1: neat and direct jump through from the students in Sydney
Speaker 1: watching students in Nashville and immediately going out and staging
Speaker 1: their own freedom rides instead and kind of Ironically, it
Speaker 1: was a later U S civil rights event that jump
Speaker 1: started the Australian freedom rides, and that was the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four Civil Rights Act. So while the Act was
Speaker 1: being debated in Congress, students in Sydney showed their disapproval
Speaker 1: of the attempts to block the bill by dressing up
Speaker 1: as KKK members and protesting outside of the U S Embassy.
Speaker 1: This obviously caused quite a raucous as you could imagine.
Speaker 1: There were arrest, there were international headlines, and unsurprisingly there
Speaker 1: was some backlash too. Mrs Are showed, for instance, rode
Speaker 1: into the Sydney Morning Herald to point out kind of
Speaker 1: the obvious here, until Aborigines had the same rights as
Speaker 1: white Australians, it was a bit hypocritical to protest racial
Speaker 1: discrimination in other countries. So the students really took that
Speaker 1: point to heart and they decided to form a group
Speaker 1: and and try to deal with us, try to learn
Speaker 1: more about racism in their own country. So these students
Speaker 1: at the University ofs and He formed a new group
Speaker 1: to focus on Australian issues, and they called it the
Speaker 1: Student Action for Aborigines um S a f A for short,
Speaker 1: and it was headed up by Charles Perkins, and Perkins
Speaker 1: is a pretty well known figure for most Australians, I think,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. I hadn't heard of him before,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how well known he is outside
Speaker 1: of Australia. He eventually became the first Aborigine to earn
Speaker 1: a university degree, and that's probably what he's most famous for.
Speaker 1: He was also the first to head up a government department.
Speaker 1: But he had been born on a reservation near Alice Springs,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of mixed race children, he had
Speaker 1: been removed from his parents and raised in an Anglican
Speaker 1: boys home. But unlike a lot of the other children
Speaker 1: who had fewer opportunities, was really really good at soccer,
Speaker 1: and he had gotten to go play pro in England
Speaker 1: and finally even turned down an offer with Manchester United.
Speaker 1: I think even those of us who don't know much
Speaker 1: about soccer, I know about Manchester United. He turned down
Speaker 1: an offer with them to return back to Australia and
Speaker 1: play as captain for one of the local clubs. And
Speaker 1: there was a two part reason for that. I mean, one,
Speaker 1: it's a good soccer opportunity, but the other is that
Speaker 1: living abroad had made him think more about devoting himself
Speaker 1: to Aboriginal rights at home. He wanted to he wanted
Speaker 1: to be at home when he wanted to make a difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: enough to give up a huge opportunity to play for
Speaker 1: one of the biggest leagues in the world. So with
Speaker 1: Perkins at the head of the s A f A,
Speaker 1: the group started planning something big and they decided to
Speaker 1: follow the model of the U. S. Freedom Writers. So
Speaker 1: basically a bus tour with the both men and women
Speaker 1: of European and Aboriginal descent taking on New South Wales. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they even explicitly we're trying to follow the U. S.
Speaker 1: Freedom Writers model that here's a clip from their announcement
Speaker 1: of the ride. The party known as s A f
Speaker 1: A plans to see firsthand the conditions in which Aboriginal
Speaker 1: people of New South Wales are living. The team will
Speaker 1: also make protests in certain towns in which it is
Speaker 1: felt that there is discrimination against the Aboriginal people. The
Speaker 1: team has been largely patterned on the concept of the
Speaker 1: Freedom Writers, who were involved in the programs of integration
Speaker 1: in the United States. So the whole thing, though, was
Speaker 1: going to be a chartered bus, of course, and it
Speaker 1: was going to cost eight hundred pounds for accommodation, food,
Speaker 1: everything like that on the ten day tour. And I
Speaker 1: like the way they raise money for it. It's it's
Speaker 1: very old fashioned sounding, selling Christmas cards, staging folk and
Speaker 1: jazz concerts and holding dances too. So by February nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five they were all ready to go. Unlike the
Speaker 1: US rides though, where the goal was to test laws
Speaker 1: that were already in place, the s a f A
Speaker 1: Ride would try to do these three things. The first
Speaker 1: was attract public attention to the plight of the Aborigines
Speaker 1: and everything about that their poor health, education, housing issues,
Speaker 1: and also to help lesson segregation between Aborigines and whites.
Speaker 1: And finally also to support the local Aborigines and ending
Speaker 1: discrimination in their own communities. So it was part protests,
Speaker 1: slash media campaign, part fact finding mission. And the Australian
Speaker 1: Institute of Aboriginal and tour Straight Islander Studies has copies
Speaker 1: of the survey forms of the students took with them,
Speaker 1: which I think is really interesting. The questionnaire for Aborigines
Speaker 1: included questions like are the white people giving the Aborigines
Speaker 1: a fair chance. Do you think that the Aboriginal situation
Speaker 1: has improved at all in the past twenty years? And
Speaker 1: can you say that you have never been to the doctor?
Speaker 1: And the shnare for white people? Included questions like the
Speaker 1: Aboriginal problem exists because Aborigines are misunderstood. Do you agree
Speaker 1: Aborigines who still have their separate customs should give them
Speaker 1: up and become average citizens? Do you agree? And really
Speaker 1: kind of hard hitting ones, steal personal ones would you
Speaker 1: welcome an Aboriginal neighbor in your street? I liked how
Speaker 1: the questions are sort of these grand social questions, but
Speaker 1: also ones like have you been to the doctor? Have
Speaker 1: you um? Or would you welcome a neighbor on your street?
Speaker 1: You know once that people are going to have to
Speaker 1: answer kind of honestly, I would think. But Perkins wasn't
Speaker 1: the only eventual big name on this trip. Other notable
Speaker 1: members of the group included Jim Spiegelman, who was later
Speaker 1: the Chief Justice of New South Wales Supreme Court, Darcy
Speaker 1: I Think Cassidy, who is a student reporter and has
Speaker 1: done a lot of the writing about the Freedom Ride,
Speaker 1: Reverend Ted Nooffs of the Wayside Chapel. I kind of
Speaker 1: thought of him as the Diane Nash of the Australian
Speaker 1: Freedom Rights organizing things back in the city. And Anne
Speaker 1: Kurthoys who journaled the trip, and it's interesting to read
Speaker 1: her journal too because she interspersed the eventual violence and
Speaker 1: all of the hard living conditions that they observed with
Speaker 1: some lighter moments like learning how to toss a boomerang
Speaker 1: and playing basketball with Aboriginal leagues, so sort of getting
Speaker 1: down to the relationship building that the students were trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish as well. Right, So they set out and
Speaker 1: their plan was to visit several cities. I'll try not
Speaker 1: to butcher them too much, the cities of Orange, Wellington, Gilgandra,
Speaker 1: wal Get, Marie, Bogabilla, tenor Field, liz Moore, Grafton, Bowraville,
Speaker 1: Kempsey and tari And they were staying in most places
Speaker 1: only about a day, so it was a quick tour
Speaker 1: they were. They were pretty much in and out of
Speaker 1: most of these cities, although they were or towns. Rather
Speaker 1: they were visiting Aborigines living in different situations. So those
Speaker 1: who were on a settlement, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: a reservation, I think, and those who were living in
Speaker 1: towns and talking to some of the white people too,
Speaker 1: So the first few days of the trip really favored
Speaker 1: that fact finding aspect, and the students didn't run into
Speaker 1: too much outright hostility, even though they did see a
Speaker 1: lot of social problems and Wellington, Kurthoys noted that there
Speaker 1: were tin houses with dirt floors and kids who all
Speaker 1: had eye diseases and really contaminated dirty river water that
Speaker 1: they had to walk long distances for. In a later town,
Speaker 1: they noted that town jobs weren't really a possibility for
Speaker 1: the Aboriginee, so they'd have to do seasonal labor in
Speaker 1: the wool industry, which was kind of unreliable and only
Speaker 1: got you through part of the year. But the first
Speaker 1: real trouble came in wall Get, where word had already
Speaker 1: gotten out what kind of protests they were planning on staging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somehow it had gotten out already that they planned a
Speaker 1: petition the Return Service League Club, which refused entrance to
Speaker 1: Aboriginal veterans of World War one and two. So when
Speaker 1: the Freedom Writers get to wall Get, they are picketing
Speaker 1: with signs that say things like end color bar and
Speaker 1: bullets did not discriminate, and they start to draw a
Speaker 1: crowd both of curious Aborigines and of white people, and
Speaker 1: in sort of a cheeky move, return Service League folks
Speaker 1: even offered everyone drinks. So at sundown the students, who
Speaker 1: had by that point been joined by local Aborigines, ended
Speaker 1: the picket and headed back to their accommodation, which was
Speaker 1: an Anglican church hall where they'd stayed before with no problems,
Speaker 1: but the minister told them this time that they'd have
Speaker 1: to leave. They had antagonized the people and apparently left
Speaker 1: beer cans in the hall. Yeah, which um, one of
Speaker 1: the journaling Freedom Writer does admit to, so this is
Speaker 1: a problem. Though. They're stuck in wall Get without accommodation,
Speaker 1: and the local Aborigines did offer them a combination in
Speaker 1: these abandoned tram cars on the edge of town, which
Speaker 1: was nice, but the Freedom riders were worried that such
Speaker 1: a dark distance location with no kind of defensive protection
Speaker 1: would just mean trouble in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: so instead they fetched their driver from his hotel and
Speaker 1: they headed out of town, but a few miles out
Speaker 1: of town in a in a scene that must have
Speaker 1: really kind of been reminiscent of the the events that
Speaker 1: took place in Anniston in the U S Freedom Rides.
Speaker 1: It's this dark, uninhabited area and a posse of cars
Speaker 1: and trucks appeared and started to push the bus off
Speaker 1: the road, and eventually a small truck did tip the bus.
Speaker 1: It didn't fall completely over, but um cars surrounded it
Speaker 1: and it seems like a pretty bad situation suddenly for
Speaker 1: the Freedom Riders. But fortunately those cars turned out to
Speaker 1: contain Aborigines who were trailing the bus to try to
Speaker 1: protect it and any of the cars that were harassing
Speaker 1: the bus sped off into the night, and the students,
Speaker 1: accompanied by their Aboriginal escort, went back to town and
Speaker 1: filed a police report, and by that point a crowd
Speaker 1: had gathered, so it was sort of the first wake
Speaker 1: up call that this bus ride wasn't gonna necessarily be
Speaker 1: all fact finding and inspiration um. And after that they
Speaker 1: went on though, continued on the trip and eventually wound
Speaker 1: up in Mari, where after the events at Walgat, the
Speaker 1: press coverage had really exploded. Yeah, it was good for
Speaker 1: the mission, all that press raised public attention, but not
Speaker 1: so great for getting straight answers out of the people
Speaker 1: they were interviewing. People weren't as eager to talk to
Speaker 1: them after that, perhaps understandably, but the students decided that
Speaker 1: they needed a focus like they had in wall Get
Speaker 1: with the Return Service League Club. They picked out public pools,
Speaker 1: this time, which were segregated by the local council and
Speaker 1: Aboriginal kids were only allowed to stay in the pool
Speaker 1: one day a week for a brief school pe session.
Speaker 1: So with the permission of Aboriginal parents, the students took
Speaker 1: a group of kids to the pool and tried to
Speaker 1: buy them admission. After an hour or so stalling and
Speaker 1: a phone call to the mayor, the pool staff finally
Speaker 1: relented and decided to let the kids in. Perkins immediately
Speaker 1: came back with twenty one more kids and also talked
Speaker 1: to the white kids who were there to see what
Speaker 1: they thought of the whole thing basically, and Kurt always
Speaker 1: remembers them being pretty ambivalent, at least a lot less
Speaker 1: so than their parents were. Yeah, who were who were
Speaker 1: not into the whole thing. And after the seeming success
Speaker 1: in Marie, you know, it seemed like they had integrated
Speaker 1: the pool, the group moved on to Boggabilla for more
Speaker 1: surveys where they learned that educational opportunities didn't really exist
Speaker 1: for the Indigenous people beyond sixth grade or so, and
Speaker 1: police really had free reign of the homes. You know,
Speaker 1: just more of this painting a picture of what life
Speaker 1: was like for these people. But on their way to
Speaker 1: their next stop, they got a call and found out
Speaker 1: that the day after they had left Maury, sixty Aboriginal
Speaker 1: kids tried to go back and get in the pool
Speaker 1: and exercise this new right they had. And while some
Speaker 1: of them were allowed in, the pool closed early, and
Speaker 1: when it reopened about an hour later, the mayor stated
Speaker 1: that it was back to the segregationist statute that had
Speaker 1: existed from the nineteen fifties. So the Freedom Writers had
Speaker 1: a little debate about what to do, whether to keep
Speaker 1: on going or to go back to Maury and not
Speaker 1: let this, not let their actions be defeated so quickly.
Speaker 1: So they went back to Maury, and this time it
Speaker 1: was a lot more violent. There was fighting, there were arrests,
Speaker 1: and the riders were even pelted with gravel when rotten
Speaker 1: eggs and vegetables. But finally the mayor did agree to
Speaker 1: put forward emotion that admittance into the pool would be
Speaker 1: based on health only, and um that to me, that
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like a way for him to still
Speaker 1: exercis as some racial discrimination because the health of the
Speaker 1: Aborigines was often worse than the local white people. But
Speaker 1: the writers still felt like they had achieved somewhat of
Speaker 1: a victory and they were escorted by police back to
Speaker 1: the bus and they ran into a problem though, another
Speaker 1: problem that our writers in the American South had run into.
Speaker 1: Their driver quit yeah, so they had to bring in
Speaker 1: a new driver to be able to move on. And
Speaker 1: as for the rest of the ride, there really wasn't
Speaker 1: anything as dramatic as wall Get or Morey that happened
Speaker 1: on the rest of the trip. Later towns did show
Speaker 1: some discrimination, poor living conditions, very few opportunities, but no violence.
Speaker 1: So by the end Kurthoys admitted that they were losing
Speaker 1: some steam and the press kind of made the interviews
Speaker 1: impossible for them. All. The press did keep the stories
Speaker 1: in the paper for a week, though the stories were
Speaker 1: often sympathetic but sometimes entirely dismissive. A cartoon in The Australian,
Speaker 1: for example, pretty much made fun of the writers, showing
Speaker 1: the um sort of riding off and the Aborigines being
Speaker 1: left behind in a cloud of dust. So I think
Speaker 1: that as you were saying, that's probably how a lot
Speaker 1: of people felt about the rides. Yeah, but the riders
Speaker 1: were also they were really interested in making sure that
Speaker 1: that cartoon or that whole view of the ride wasn't accurate,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to put the information that they had
Speaker 1: gathered through all those surveys and all the connections they
Speaker 1: had made to meeting people and and making connections with
Speaker 1: the local groups that existed, to put all that to
Speaker 1: good youth. So later in the year, an Aboriginal organization
Speaker 1: in wall Get asked for help desegregating the luxury theater
Speaker 1: the Oasis Hotel, and they went to the student group
Speaker 1: for help and for students, and two Aboriginal women were
Speaker 1: eventually arrested when the attempt was made. In August nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Perkins also reported back at the Federal Council for the
Speaker 1: Advancement of Aborigines and Tourist Straight Islanders and presented some
Speaker 1: of that data to um that some of the data
Speaker 1: that he and the students had found. And as we
Speaker 1: mentioned too, he went on to have a career in
Speaker 1: Aboriginal affairs for the government. So while some eventual Aboriginal
Speaker 1: rights leaders remember the effect of the writers pulling into
Speaker 1: their towns, the big change really came from putting the violence,
Speaker 1: discrimination and the poor living conditions front and center for
Speaker 1: Australians who weren't used to seeing it at a time,
Speaker 1: and they got it all on tape, to the bus
Speaker 1: being run off the road and wall Get the vice
Speaker 1: president of the Walget Return Service League club saying he'd
Speaker 1: never allow an Aborigine you to join. All of that
Speaker 1: ended up on film and people who were more removed
Speaker 1: from this day to day discrimination were shocked to see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when the time came to actually change legislation, more
Speaker 1: Australians had a better sense of the true discrimination in
Speaker 1: their country. And there were two parts of the Constitution
Speaker 1: that specifically discriminated against Aborigines then. The first was that
Speaker 1: federal laws didn't apply to Indigenous people. So this made
Speaker 1: it so that different states, different local governments could pass
Speaker 1: different laws regarding Aborigines, and it meant that they didn't
Speaker 1: have access to federal services like social security. And the
Speaker 1: other main problem with the constitution is that Aborigines weren't
Speaker 1: counted in the census, so it meant that they only
Speaker 1: got these very basic state services. And um, you can
Speaker 1: actually see ad score campaigns for trying to get Aborigines
Speaker 1: counted in the census, and and they make quite a point.
Speaker 1: But only two years after the Ride, the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven referendum amended those two sections of the Constitution, with
Speaker 1: more than nine percent of Australians voting in favor of
Speaker 1: doing so. So even though Aborigines didn't get full rights
Speaker 1: from the nineteen sixty seven referendum, it was still a
Speaker 1: really big step forward in better services and and better
Speaker 1: treatment and just kind of acceptance that there was a
Speaker 1: major problem. And even though the Australian Freedom Ride has
Speaker 1: a few years to go before it hits its fiftieth anniversary,
Speaker 1: students at the University of Sydney marked the event this year,
Speaker 1: traveling by bus through the same towns and gathering input
Speaker 1: from Indigenous communities to present to the government to further reform,
Speaker 1: so take it the step further going with it. And
Speaker 1: they were even led out by the Central Coast Aboriginal
Speaker 1: motorcycle group, the Black Knight, which I just thought that
Speaker 1: sounded so awesome, but I thought it was interesting that
Speaker 1: they chose the fiftieth anniversary of the U s Freedom
Speaker 1: Rides kind of the starting point of of the inspiration
Speaker 1: behind the Australian rides, as as the anniversary they wanted
Speaker 1: to commemorate. I don't know, it's it's been really neat
Speaker 1: to learn about these two events, and I have to
Speaker 1: thank listener Eli who suggested the Australian Freedom Ride, which
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of. I of course knew about the
Speaker 1: US Freedom Rides, but uh, learning that there was this
Speaker 1: Australian offshoot made me want to research both of them
Speaker 1: and get to know not only the offsheet but the
Speaker 1: inspiration too. Yeah. And it's I mean, even though one
Speaker 1: was inspired by the other, they're very different. They are different,
Speaker 1: and it's been nice to, uh to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more about them and to kind of compare and
Speaker 1: contrast I guess you would say the climate especially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly how two different countries to very different countries with
Speaker 1: a similar yet still very different problem dealt with it. Um,
Speaker 1: So thank you to Eli, and also thank you to
Speaker 1: listener Helen who helped us out with some of these pronunciations.
Speaker 1: Any mistakes are ours and not hers. So we were
Speaker 1: really interested to learn that Australia had its own freedom ride.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that there have been other events inspired
Speaker 1: by the original freedom rides, or or just events kind
Speaker 1: of like this. Everybody gets on a bus and goes
Speaker 1: out and accomplishes something. So if you want to let
Speaker 1: us know about any of those other events around the world,
Speaker 1: feel free to email at that History podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter at mt
Speaker 1: in History, and we are on Facebook too, And if
Speaker 1: you're not done learning about Australia related topics, we have
Speaker 1: an article on our website called what was Australia's Stolen Generation?
Speaker 1: And you can look at it by visiting our homepage
Speaker 1: at www dot how stuff works dot com for more
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