Op-Ed

The ‘Freedom Riders’ of Australia

Published

11 years ago

March 2, 2015

By Lekan Oguntoyinbo
NNPA Columnist

One day in late February 1965, an interracial group of 29 university students rode into a small, segregated town looking to make trouble. For in this community, people of color were served last at stores, forced to sit in the front row at theaters and forbidden to swim in public pools or try on apparel at clothing stores.

Their bus voyage was part of a two-week campaign against racism and legal discrimination. The students named their group the “Freedom Riders.” When they arrived in this town, they invited children of different races to swim with them in the public pool – to the great dismay of local White residents.

Days earlier, the students had been run out of another town for protesting outside a club for ex-servicemen that denied membership to veterans of color. Whites pelted them with eggs, shouted insults and fought with them. At least one of the Freedom Riders was knocked to the ground.

These events might sound reminiscent of the 1960 Freedom Riders who desegregated interstate buses in the Deep South, but they actually took place nearly 10,000 miles away in Australia – a nation with a long history of racism and pernicious violence against the dark-skinned indigenous people who’d lived there for more than 40,000 years before Europeans arrived in the late 1700s.

For more than 150 years, European settlers displaced and murdered aborigines and destroyed their communities, often through government-sanctioned policies. Throughout much of the early 20^th Century, indigenous children were forcibly taken from their parents and sent to live with White families, foster homes or boarding schools designed to culturally assimilate them. Many others were forced to live on reservations.

Like Blacks in America, indigenous people were treated as second-class citizens and had limited access to quality housing, jobs and a good education. Before the late 1960s, indigenous people did not have the right to vote and were not even included in the census.

During the middle 1960s, student activists at the University of Sydney – one of Australia’s most prominent higher education institutions – decided to challenge the status quo. Inspired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) – and the interracial group of Freedom Riders who risked their lives to defy Jim Crow laws in the Deep South – the students decided to import this form of civil disobedience popularized around the globe by American civil rights activists into Australia. The University of Sydney student activists’ two-week “freedom ride” gained considerable attention and marked a major turning in race relations in Australia.

Historians say it led to a “yes” vote in a 1967 referendum about whether to include native Australians in the census count. It also raised awareness about racism Down Under and forced the government to take steps to integrate Aborigines into mainstream Australian society, increase access to opportunities and eliminate legal racial discrimination. Of course, the Freedom Rides and the referendum were not a panacea for Australia’s racial problems.

Like Blacks in America, indigenous Australians continue to grapple with the legacy of centuries of racism and oppression. Infant mortality is two and a half times higher among Aborigines. Their unemployment rate is three times higher than that of the general population, they are less likely to complete their schooling, and they comprise 20 percent of the prison population, even though they are less than 5 percent of the population.

But Australia is a nation that is considerably more enlightened about race than it was half a century ago and indigenous people have the same rights as the general population – at least on paper.

Starting this week, much more attention will be focused on the bravery of the “Bloody Sunday” marchers who 50 years ago attempted to trek from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. to protest laws that denied blacks the right to vote. And that is as it should be.

But in celebrating the landmark accomplishments of the marchers in Alabama, this also is an appropriate time to reflect on the impact of the Civil Rights Movement – not just in the United States, but around the world.

This is an appropriate time to reflect on the hope that activists inspired among oppressed racial, ethnic and religious minorities around the world, including Catholics in Northern Ireland, Blacks in Rhodesia, Dalits in India, people of color in South Africa and indigenous people in Australia.

Around the world, much is made of America’s “founding fathers,” a group made up largely of slave owners who balked at entrusting democracy to the masses and who believed voting rights should be the exclusive preserve of property-owning White males.

Maybe we ought to consider spending more time paying homage to the men and women who in the last 60 years pushed America to live up the letter of its constitution – and, in so doing, inspired and helped change the rest of the world.

Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Email him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @oguntoyinbo.

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COMMENTARY: The National Protest Must Be Accompanied with Our Votes

Just as Trump is gathering election data like having the FBI take all the election data in Georgia from the 2020 election, so must we organize in preparation for the coming primary season to have the right people on ballots in each Republican district, so that we can regain control of the House of Representatives and by doing so, restore the separation of powers and balance that our democracy is being deprived of.

Published

3 days ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper. File photo..

By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper

As thousands of Americans march every week in cities across this great nation, it must be remembered that the protest without the vote is of no concern to Donald Trump and his administration.

In every city, there is a personal connection to the U.S. Congress. In too many cases, the member of Congress representing the people of that city and the congressional district in which it sits, is a Republican. It is the Republicans who are giving silent support to the destructive actions of those persons like the U.S. Attorney General, the Director of Homeland Security, and the National Intelligence Director, who are carrying out the revenge campaign of the President rather than upholding the oath of office each of them took “to Defend The Constitution of the United States.”

In California, the primary comes in June 2026. The congressional races must be a priority just as much as the local election of people has been so important in keeping ICE from acquiring facilities to build more prisons around the country.

“We the People” are winning this battle, even though it might not look like it. Each of us must get involved now, right where we are.

In this Black History month, it is important to remember that all we have accomplished in this nation has been “in spite of” and not “because of.” Frederick Douglas said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”

Today, the struggle is to maintain our very institutions and history. Our strength in this struggle rests in our “collectiveness.” Our newspapers and journalists are at the greatest risk. We must not personally add to the attack by ignoring those who have been our very foundation, our Black press.

Are you spending your dollars this Black History Month with those who salute and honor contributions by supporting those who tell our stories? Remember that silence is the same as consent and support for the opposition. Where do you stand and where will your dollars go?

Oakland Post

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Activism

Post Newspaper Invites NNPA to Join Nationwide Probate Reform Initiative

The Post’s Probate Reform Group meets the first Thursday of every month via Zoom and invites the public to attend. The Post is making the initiative national and will submit information from its monthly meeting to the NNPA to educate, advocate, and inform its readers.

Published

3 days ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Tanya Dennis

The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) represents the Black press with over 200 newspapers nationwide.

Last night the Post announced that it is actively recruiting the Black press to inform the public that there is a probate “five-alarm fire” occurring in Black communities and invited every Black newspaper starting from the Birmingham Times in Alabama to the Milwaukee Times Weekly in Wisconsin, to join the Post in our “Year of Action” for probate reform.

Reporter Tanya Dennis says, “The adage that ‘When America catches a cold, Black folks catch the flu” is too true in practice; that’s why we’re engaging the Black Press to not only warn, but educate the Black community regarding the criminal actions we see in probate court: Thousands are losing generational wealth to strangers. It’s a travesty that happens daily.”

Venus Gist, a co-host of the reform group, states, “ Unfortunately, people are their own worst enemy when it comes to speaking with loved ones regarding their demise. It’s an uncomfortable subject that most avoid, but they do so at their peril. The courts rely on dissention between family members, so I encourage not only a will and trust [be created] but also videotape the reading of your documents so you can show you’re of sound mind.”

In better times, drafting a will was enough; then a trust was an added requirement to ‘iron-clad’ documents and to assure easy transference of wealth.

No longer.

As the courts became underfunded in the last 20 years, predatory behavior emerged to the extent that criminality is now occurring at alarming rates with no oversight, with courts isolating the conserved, and, I’ve heard, many times killing conservatees for profit. Plundering the assets of estates until beneficiaries are penniless is also common.”

Post Newspaper Publisher Paul Cobb says, “The simple solution is to avoid probate at all costs. If beneficiaries can’t agree, hire a private mediator and attorney to work things out. The moment you walk into court, you are vulnerable to the whims of the court. Your will and trust mean nothing.”

Zakiya Jendayi, a co-host of the Probate Reform Group and a victim herself, says, “In my case, the will and trust were clear that I am the beneficiary of the estate, but the opposing attorney said I used undue influence to make myself beneficiary. He said that without proof, and the judge upheld the attorney’s baseless assertion. In court, the will and trust is easily discounted.”

The Black press reaches out to 47 million Black Americans with one voice. The power of the press has never been so important as it is now in this national movement to save Black generational wealth from predatory attorneys, guardians and judges.

The next probate reform meeting is on March 5, from 7 – 9 p.m. PST. Zoom Details:
Meeting ID: 825 0367 1750
Passcode: 475480

All are welcome.

Oakland Post

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Activism

COMMENTARY: The Biases We Don’t See — Preventing AI-Driven Inequality in Health Care

For decades, medicine promoted false assumptions about Black bodies. Black patients were told they had lower lung capacity, and medical devices adjusted their results accordingly. That practice was not broadly reversed until 2021. Up until 2022, a common medical formula used to measure how well a person’s kidneys were working automatically gave Black patients a higher score simply because they were Black. On paper, this made their kidneys appear healthier than they truly were. As a result, kidney disease was sometimes detected later in Black patients, delaying critical treatment and referrals.

Published

3 days ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, M.D (D-San Diego). File photo.

By Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, M.D., Special to California Black Media Partners

Technology is sold to us as neutral, objective, and free of human flaws. We are told that computers remove emotion, bias, and error from decision-making. But for many Black families, lived experience tells a different story. When technology is trained on biased systems, it reflects those same biases and silently carries them forward.

We have seen this happen across multiple industries. Facial recognition software has misidentified Black faces at far higher rates than White faces, leading to wrongful police encounters and arrests. Automated hiring systems have filtered out applicants with traditionally Black names because past hiring data reflected discriminatory patterns. Financial algorithms have denied loans or offered worse terms to Black borrowers based on zip codes and historical inequities, rather than individual creditworthiness. These systems did not become biased on their own. They were trained on biased data.

Healthcare is not immune.

These biases were not limited to software or medical devices. Dangerous myths persisted that Black people feel less pain, contributing to undertreatment and delayed care. These beliefs were embedded in modern training and practice, not distant history. Those assumptions shaped the data that now feeds medical technology. When biased clinical practices form the basis of algorithms, the risk is not hypothetical. The bias can be learned, automated, and scaled.

For us in the Black community, this creates understandable fear and mistrust. Many families already carry generational memories of medical discrimination, from higher maternal mortality to lower life expectancy to being dismissed or unheard in clinical settings. Adding AI biases could make our community even more apprehensive about the healthcare system.

As a physician, I know how much trust patients place in the healthcare system during their most vulnerable moments. As a Black woman, I understand how bias can shape experiences in ways that are often invisible to those who do not live them. As a mother of two Black children, I think constantly about the systems that will shape their health and well-being. As a legislator, I believe it is our responsibility to confront emerging risks before they become widespread harm.

That is why I am the author of Senate Bill (SB) 503. This bill aims to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare by requiring developers and users of AI systems to identify, mitigate, and monitor biased impacts in their outputs to reduce racial and other disparities in clinical decision-making and patient care.

Currently under consideration in the State Assembly, SB 503 was not written to slow innovation. In fact, I encourage it. But it is our duty must ensure that every tool we in the healthcare field helps patients rather than harms them.

The health of our families depends on it.

About the Author

Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D–San Diego) is a physician and public health advocate representing California’s 39th Senate District.