Country Women and the Colour Bar

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.