Freedom Ride (Australia)

The Freedom Ride of 1965 was a journey undertaken by a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in a bus across New South Wales, led by Charles Perkins, an Arrernte and Kalkadoon civil rights activist.

The Freedom Riders aim was to bring to the attention of the public the extent of racial discrimination in Australia, and is considered a significant event in the history of civil rights for Indigenous Australians.

Australia overwhelmingly passed a 1967 referendum removing discriminatory sections from the Australian Constitution and enabling the federal government to take direct action in Aboriginal affairs.

The original Freedom Riders were: Charles Perkins, Gary Williams, Aidan Foy, Alan Outhred, Alex Mills, Ann Curthoys, Barry Corr, Beth Hansen, Bob Gallagher, Brian Aarons, Chris Page, Colin Bradford, Darce Cassidy, David Pepper, Derek Molloy, Hall Greenland, Helen Gray, Jim Spigelman, John Butterworth, John Gowdie, John Powles, Judith Rich, Louise Higham, Machteld Hali, Norm Mackay, Paddy Dawson, Pat Healy, Ray Leppik, Rick Collins, Robyn Iredale, Sue Johnston, Sue Reeves, Warwick Richards, and Wendy Golding.

Lyall Munro Snr told NITV in 2017 that he and the Moree Aboriginal Advancement Committee had been fighting to change the town's segregationist by-laws for years before the Freedom Riders arrived, but not in a confrontational way.

The event was widely covered by the media at home and internationally, and it caught the attention of the Australian public, proving to be a "seminal moment" in the history of Australia.

[10] Crux, the Australian Student Christian Movement journal, ran a special issue on "Aborigines", which included a guest editorial on the significance of the Freedom Ride.

[10] Later that year, Perkins later related what happened to the 200 people attending the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) conference in Canberra.

[10] The Australian Black Power movement emerged in Redfern in Sydney, Fitzroy, Melbourne, and South Brisbane, following the Freedom Ride, and there followed a period of Aboriginal activism across Australia.

[19] To mark the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Ride, two coaches re-ran the route with several of the original participants and a group of present-day University of Sydney students.