“Robeson spoke out against New Zealand’s discrimination against the Maoris and Australia’s more overt brutality to its own native population, the aborigines. There were about seventy-five thousand aborigines in a total Australian population of ten million, driven off their land into a desert interior scarce in food and water and nearly devoid of the game they had traditionally hunted and lived on. Without the vote or representation, the aborigines roamed the Outback, a desperately abused people…

The more Robeson learned about the condition of the aborigines as his tour progressed through the country, the more his indignation grew. Through Faith Bandler, an aboriginal activist, the Robesons saw a private showing of a fifteen-minute film made in the late 1950s on the plight of the aborigines in the Warburton Ranges. As she remembers it, ‘The tears started to stream down his face’; but when the film showed thirsty children waiting for water, his sorrow turned to anger. Flinging to the floor the black cap he had taken to wearing on his head for warmth, he swore aloud that he would return to Australia and help bring attention to the appalling conditions in which the aborigines lived. He repeated that promise a few days later to the press, and again at a large peace reception for him at Paddington Hall in Sydney. ‘There’s no such thing as a ‘backward’ human being,’ he told the crowd. ‘There is only a society which says they are backward.’ He cited the case of his own family: his cousins in North Carolina who worked the cotton and tobacco fields were also called ‘backward.’ He cited the case of his own family: his cousins in North Carolina who worked the cotton and tobacco fields were also called ‘backward’; that meant they hadn’t been allowed to attend school. ‘The indigenous people of Australia,’ he roared, ‘are my brothers and sisters.'” -“Paul Robeson: A Biography” By: Martin Duberman