Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s marginalisation of Black voices is a symptom of an industry bereft of fresh ideas and cultural awareness
Fifty-four years ago there was a demonstration involving about 30 university students, an old bus, and three or four “outback” New South Wales towns. These days the 1965 Freedom Ride is generally acknowledged as a significant event in Australia’s cultural maturity. But we are not supposed to draw any parallels with similar Indigenous-led protests today.
Modelled on the Freedom Ride demonstration in the United States in 1961, Australia’s version departed from Sydney on 12 February 1965 with a slightly different focus.
“When the idea was taken up in Australia,” recalls the Freedom Rider and professional historian Ann Curthoys, “it had a much broader meaning – black and white students travelling together by bus to draw attention to all kinds of racial discrimination. Indeed our concern was not transportation, which was not segregated, but rather places of leisure in country towns – pools and picture theatres and RSL clubs – which were. We were also to draw attention to the appalling conditions under which Indigenous people lived, in shanty towns, on reserves and missions …”
One of the enduring interventions which occurred on that fortnight round-trip was the “desegregation” of the pool in the north-western NSW town of Moree. Led by the legendary Arrernte man Charles Perkins, the activists first assembled out front of the town’s council chambers to protest racial discrimination.
In her book, Freedom Ride: a Freedom Rider remembers , Curthoys writes: “For about an hour, we carried placards saying ‘Hotels and clubs are integrated, but not baths’, ‘Are you proud of your council?’, ‘Color is not contagious’, and ‘Why whites Only?’.”
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Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2FXP3wh
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