Pearl Gibbs

Pearl Gibbs (Gambanyi) (1901 – 28 April 1983) was an Indigenous Australian activist, and the most prominent female activist within the Aboriginal movement in the early 20th century. She was a member of the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), and was involved with various protest events such as the 1938 Day of Mourning.

Gibbs was born Pearl Mary Brown in La Perouse, Sydney, in 1901, to Mary Margaret Brown and David Barry. Gibbs grew up in and around the town of Yass, where she attended Mount Carmel School along with her sister Olga. In 1917, Gibbs and her sister moved to Sydney to work as domestics, Gibbs found a position in Potts Point. Gibbs met other Aboriginal women and girls who were apprenticed as domestics by the Aborigines Protection Board and helped them make representations to the Board about their working conditions.

Later she married a British sailor, with whom she had a daughter and two sons; however, they later separated, and Gibbs cared for the children on her own.

In 1930, Gibbs helped run a camp to support unemployed Aboriginal workers, and in 1933 she organised a strike for Aboriginal pea-pickers. She was one of the first members of the APA, and attracted large crowds when she gave speeches in the Domain in Sydney. She began to work with APA president Jack Patten and secretary William Ferguson, and in 1938 she was involved with organising the Day of Mourning protests, which at the time was the most significant Aboriginal civil rights demonstration in Australia. She was a spokesperson for the Committee for Aboriginal Citizen Rights, the lobby group which was set up to carry on the work of the Day of Mourning Congress. Later in 1938 she succeeded Ferguson as secretary of the APA, and she held the position until 1940.

In 1941, Gibbs made the first radio broadcast by an Aboriginal woman, on the station 2WL in Wollongong. Her speech was on Aboriginal civil rights, and carefully scripted so that it would be allowed on the air. Much of Gibbs' early work was done during a time when Aboriginal people were subject to controls on their movement, unless they had an exemption certificate from the relevant protection board. Police would also monitor all public civil rights demonstrations. In 1993, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) released their file on Gibbs to the National Archives of Australia. The file included records of which political meetings Gibbs had attended, and clippings of newspaper articles in which she had been mentioned.

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