The US Freedom Rides of 1961 marked a very important event in American history as well as Australian history. In 1961, civil rights activists used the means of peaceful protest to challenge segregation on public buses. The protests carried out by the African-Americans in the southern of the United States sparked inspiration for Aboriginal activism in Australia in 1965. Charles Perkins, an Aboriginal activist played a pivotal role in influencing activism in Australia through his opinions. At the time, the media played a huge role in the push for land rights and the publicity of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. The 1961 Freedom Rides were a significant event in the Civil Rights Movement. African-American civil rights activists rode interstate …show more content…
During the early 1960s, through the media coverage of the US Freedom Rides, many Aboriginals were becoming increasingly engaged of the Civil Rights Movement. The Freedom Rides in the American South included student political protests which in turn achieved results in the aims of giving civil rights to African-Americans, immensely inspired Aboriginal Australians to fights for their own civil rights. Several students from the University of Sydney formed an organisation called ‘Students Action for Aborigines’ (SAFA). The group of students boarded a bus and planned to tour the western and coastal towns of New South Wales. Their aims included drawing public attention to the poor Aboriginal living standards – health, education, and housing – and decrease the social prejudiced barriers that kept the Aboriginal and ‘white’ residents apart. They hoped to bring media attention to their campaign. They decided that it was time to escalate the level of public awareness of the position of the aboriginal community and the degree of intolerance that existed towards Aboriginals in NSW. Charles Perkins was an Aboriginal Australian activist amongst this. Perkins was the first Aboriginal to graduate university and he did so from the University of Sydney. He was one of the key members of the Freedom Ride in NSW. He was president of SAFA. They travelled to many towns in western NSW and sought out towns that displayed the extremely poor living conditions of the Indigenous Australian