Country women and the colour bar
Grassroots activism and the Country Women's Association
Country women and the colour bar is a timely corrective to established ideas about race relations in rural New South Wales. It reveals the untold story of grassroots efforts by Aboriginal and white women working together to make significant gains for Aboriginal communities prior to Aboriginal people's widespread access to citizen's rights.
In the 1950s and 1960s, in towns across New South Wales, specially created Aboriginal branches of the Country Women's Association were established. Country women and the colour bar offers insights into the experience of ordinary Aboriginal and white rural women as they participated in beauty contests, cookery, handicraft lessons and baby contests. It reveals how Aboriginal assimilation policy met everyday reality as these rural women broke the rural colour bar in an unprecedented fashion and fostered cooperative campaigns for meaningful change in race-relations.
Some prominent Australians feature in these extraordinary stories: Jessie Street, Charles Perkins, Rachel Mundine and Purth Moorhouse.
Production Details
- Paperback
- 230mm x 1955mm x 15mm
- 248pp
- Released October 2015
- ISBN 9781925302967
Contents
Illustrations
Map
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The colour bar in Queensland and New South Wales
Chapter 2: Boggabilla- Overcoming Aboriginal isolation
Chapter 3: Kempsey- Segregation and CWA baby shows
Chapter 4: Taree- Supporting self-help
Chapter 5: Nowra- Differing ideas of leadership
Chapter 6: Grafton- Shared goals across class and race
Chapter 7: Griffith- International days
Conclusion: It was time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About The Author
Jennifer Jones is a lecturer in Australian Indigenous Studies at La Trobe University, Australia. Her research interests include Indigenous Australian history and biography, Indigenous Australian Literature, cross cultural collaboration, rural and religious history and histories of education.
About The Cover
Front Cover: Mrs Tilly Bloomfield with other Country Women's Association representatives at the Murrumbidgee- Lachlan handcraft exhibition, 1962. Courtesy Country Women's Association Griffith Branch.