Freedom Ride |

Gary Williams and Charles Perkins at Sydney University in 1963 (photograph courtesy Gary Williams)

Location: University Of Sydney

The decade of the 1960s was a time of protest against racism around the world. In 1965, Sydney University student and Arrente/Kalkadoon man Charles Perkins joined with university students and others in the ‘Freedom Ride’, which aimed to increase public awareness about racism in Australia.

Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA) was formed in mid-1964 to engage students at the University of Sydney with issues encountered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across Australia. The group was directly influenced by the 1961 Freedom Rides in America, and the ensuing African American civil rights movement.

On Friday 12 February 1965, 29 students from the university set out in a bus to tour regional towns in NSW to expose systemic discrimination and racism against Aboriginal people. Among their number included Charles Perkins, Ann Curthoys, Hall Greenland and Jim Spigelman, along with Gerry Mason, an older Aboriginal man from South Australia who was a friend of Perkins.

The ‘Freedom Ride’ bus was farewelled from the University of Sydney campus with a prayer by the Rev Ted Noffs and the voices of visiting African American performers singing the stirring protest song ‘We Shall Overcome’. The bus visited 16 towns over 15 days: Wellington, Gulargambone, Walgett, Collerenbri, Moree, Boggabilla, Warwick, Tenterfield, Glenn Innes, Inverell, Grafton, Lismore, Coffs Harbour, Bowraville, Kempsey and Taree. Five other students later joined the bus including Gumbaynggirr/Bundjalung man and university student Gary Williams at Bowraville.

The Freedom Ride was intended to expose segregation and the shame of Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal people. The protest drew on the non-violent protest literature of the African American civil rights movement, with its methods applied to the Australian context.

The SAFA bus was on the road for two weeks (12-26 February 1965) but generated comment and debate in the local and international press for years afterwards about the poor treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia. A month after the Freedom Ride, Charles Perkins and 40 other Aboriginal men staged a ‘sit in’ demonstration at the Burlington Hotel to protest the hotel’s policy to refuse admission to Aboriginal patrons. The Freedom Ride also had a lasting impact on the Aboriginal people and communities in the towns that the bus visited, and the protest became a contributing factor in breaking down the ‘colour bar’ in regional towns in NSW.

Freedom Ride (1993), directed by Rachel Perkins, City Pictures Pty Ltd, Screen Australia, https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/freedom-ride-1993/9358/ and National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/99330-blood-brothers-freedom-ride

‘Freedom Rides’, Living Black, Season 22, Episode 2, SBS Australia, https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/news-series/living-black/living-black-series-22/living-black-s22-ep2/420295747743 or https://youtu.be/JS3YJN3WED4?si=KhxzakgRAHGf8jPe

Awaye!, ‘Freedom rides again’, ABC Radio National, Saturday 7 February 2015, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/awaye/freedom-rides-again/6065064

Awaye!, ‘The Freedom Ride – 40 years on’, Friday 25 March 2005, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/awaye/the-freedom-ride—40-years-on/3672144

Archives and oral history interviews

‘Ann Curthoys’ diaries’, 1965, AIATSIS, https://aiatsis.gov.au/collection/featured-collections/ann-curthoys-diaries

Charles Perkins interviewed by Peter Read in the Peter Read collection of interviews conducted for his book entitled, Charles Perkins: a biography, 1988-89, National Library of Australia, ORAL TRC 2303/13, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/690957

Interviews and radio programs about the Freedom Ride, 1987-2002, AIATSIS, CURTHOYS_A02, https://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/item/a373800

Interviews about the Freedom Ride, 1991-94, AIATSIS, CURTHOYS_A01, https://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/item/a373712

Ann Curthoys interviewed by Susan Marsden, 2002, National Library of Australia, ORAL TRC 4911, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/2165716

Noel Hazard oral history interviews and photograph by Louise Whelan, 2018, State Library of NSW, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/nZNWrx7n

Exhibition, display and websites

‘1965 Freedom Ride’, AIATSIS, Last updated: 27 May 2022, https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1965-freedom-ride

Darce Cassidy, ‘Freedom Ride’, https://darcecassidy.com/freedomride/

‘Freedom Ride, 1965’, Collaborating for Indigenous Rights, National Museum of Australia, https://indigenousrights.net.au/civil_rights/freedom_ride,_1965

Jakeb Lovejoy, ‘1965 Australian Freedom Ride’, 23 August 2021, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c00b8a121b954243b47cb4adff73201d

‘Freedom Rides to Walgett’, Walgett Freedom Ride, 2023-24, https://walgettamsfreedomride.com/commemoration/

‘Freedom Ride ’65: unpublished photos from the Tribune archive’, 2015, State Library of NSW, https://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/events/exhibitions/2015/freedom_ride/index.html