The main intention of the Freedom Ride of 1965 was to raise awareness of discrimination against Aboriginal people and to try and generate a movement for change in Australia. The Freedom Ride is significant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people because the key aims were to improve the level of health, education and living standards of Aboriginal people, including the desegregation of public facilities in regional towns such as Walgett and Moree. The Freedom Ride adopted the non-violent, direct philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr’s US Civil Rights movement. Whilst change did not come immediately, the Freedom Ride contributed to other events which made significant changes to Aboriginal people, such as the 1967 Referendum which acknowledged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s right to be included in the census and to be considered citizens in their own country. “In the sixties in Australia if you were born Aboriginal, by law you couldn’t marry without permission, eat in a restaurant, enter a pub, swim in a public pool or vote” (Charles Perkins, 1993). White people in Australia were largely ignorant of the needs of Aborigines. In 1965, Charles Perkins (the first Indigenous person to graduate from university) led other students in a campaign across the country to reveal segregation and the ignorant treatment of Aboriginal people by by white Australians. Perkins directly states his objective in ‘Blood Brothers’ made by his daughter, Rachel Perkins, was to make sure that the initiative was successful. The Freedom Riders used non-violent direct action (like protests) in the towns to challenge acts of racial
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