Image: (L) Will Thorpe/City Hub, (R) Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, courtesy SEARCH Foundation
A photographic exhibition commemorating the historic 1965 Freedom Ride is open to the public at 119 Redfern Street, Redfern, hosted by the City of Sydney.
The exhibition features pictures from the famous bus tour of northern New South Wales, during which students protested remnant segregation and campaigned against discrimination targeted at Indigenous Australians, raising national awareness of these injustices.
City Hub attended the exhibition, which began on 13 February and runs for exactly a month until 13 March. Located near Redfern station, the exhibition space is a historic building which has been aptly renovated for such a display.
As well as pictures of the trip, it features contemporary portraits of some who lived in towns on the way when the bus full of metropolitan varsity students came along, bringing national media attention with them.
It does not take long to view the entire assortment of photographs, which is spread across two floors. Viewers might find it best to go in the late morning or early afternoon before having lunch in the surrounding area, which is intertwined with the recent history of Aboriginal people.
Viewers can scan QR codes to hear some of those who bore witness to history. This feature was not working when City Hub attended; it has since been fixed.
1965 Freedom Ride: ‘one of Australia’s most significant civil rights protests’
The trip was inspired by the Freedom Rides which took place in the United States.
From 1961, multiracial groups of university students travelled on interstate buses into the American Deep South, testing whether court rulings mandating desegregation on buses would be adhered to.
The violent backlash the activists received helped put the cause of black civil rights at the top of the American national consciousness.
Charles Perkins, of Arrente and Kalkadoon Aboriginal lineage, led the Freedom Ride in New South Wales. He is frequently cited as the first Aboriginal man to graduate from an Australian university.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore AO said the excursion “is now widely recognised as one of Australia’s most significant civil rights protests.”
“While the bus was on the road for a little more than two weeks, the Freedom Ride sparked national and international debate for years about the discrimination and injustices faced by Aboriginal peoples,” the lord mayor remarked.
“The protest had a lasting impact in the regional communities the bus visited and influenced the civil rights and self-determination movement in Redfern in the 1970s.”
“Our exhibition is another way to mark the legacy and impact of the Freedom Ride, 60 years on.”
Moree elder remembers
Lyall Munro Jnr, who grew up in Moree, remembers when the students came to town.
“When I was 13, I watched the bus roll down the mission,” Munro said.
“The white students on the bus along with Charlie came down and asked some of the parents on the mission if they could take some of us kids to the pool. Some parents were scared to let their kids go, but others were okay after they explained what they were doing.”
“This was the first time I saw white people stand up against the racism we lived with every day.”
NSW Government commemorates the historic Freedom Ride
Heritage Minister Penny Sharpe and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Treaty David Harris commemorated the ride in the northern town of Walgett, where they announced a funding grant for a memorial pavilion.
When students arrived in Walgett, they found Indigenous veterans were banned from the local Returned Services League club.
After the students left the town, their bus was run off the road by angry locals from Walgett who had followed them in the night.
A blue plaque was unveiled by the ministers to commemorate the historic event six decades ago.
Two years after the Freedom Ride, an overwhelming majority of Australians voted to count Indigenous people in the Census and give the Commonwealth Parliament the ability to legislate for their benefit.
Indigenous affairs had previously been a state matter. With the states being less liberal overall than the federal government, recognition of the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples varied across the country, and in decades prior to the referendum, many Indigenous people had been subject to varying legislated discrimination.
The historic 1965 Freedom Ride exhibition is open to the public at 119 Redfern Street, Redfern, from 13 February – 13 March.
