William Ferguson

William Ferguson (born July 24, 1882, Darlington Point, New South Wales [Australia]—died January, 4, 1950, Dubbo, New South Wales) was an Australian activist who fought for the rights of Australian Aboriginal peoples. He was a strong opponent of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board, a government-run organization composed of white members who set rules to manage the lives of Aboriginal people.

Early life and activism

William (Bill) Ferguson was the second of seven children born to William Ferguson, a Scottish immigrant who worked as a sheepshearer and boundary rider (ranch hand), and Emily (née Ford) Ferguson, an Aboriginal homemaker who had previously worked as a housemaid. Bill Ferguson had little schooling, and in 1896 he started a career as a sheepshearer. Soon after, he became a member of the Australian Workers’ Union. In 1911 Ferguson married Margaret Mathieson Gowans, a domestic worker. They moved frequently as they sought out shearing jobs. By 1916 they were living in Gulargambone, New South Wales, where Ferguson resurrected a branch of the Australian Labor Party and served as its secretary for two years. After having earned his living as a mail carrier from 1920 to 1924, Ferguson took up shearing again and then worked as a labourer. While employed in a relief program funded by the government in response to the Great Depression, Ferguson advocated for the rights of the unemployed, especially for Aboriginal workers who were denied participation in government work relief programs. In the meantime, he and his family, which included 12 children, settled in Dubbo, New South Wales, in 1933.

The Aborigines Protection Board, the Aborigines Progressive Association, and the Day of Mourning

Formed in 1883, the Aborigines Protection Board controlled major aspects of Aboriginal people’s lives, including where they lived and worked and with whom they associated. Over the years the board acquired more power; by 1915 it was allowed by law to remove Aboriginal children from their homes and place them with white families (the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children whom the government forcibly removed and resettled became known as the Stolen Generations). After the amendment of the Aborigines Protection Act (1909) in 1936 granted even more power to the Aborigines Protection Board, Ferguson began fighting back, founding the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) in 1937 to organize the political struggle for Aboriginal rights. The association’s main goals were to achieve citizenship and other rights for Aboriginal people and to do away with the Aborigines Protection Board.

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As secretary of the APA, Ferguson helped organize the 1938 Day of Mourning with William Cooper (leader of the Australian Aborigines’ League), Jack Patten, Pearl Gibbs, and other activists. On January 26—Australia Day, the national holiday commemorating the establishment of the first permanent European settlement on the continent of Australia—protesters, who dressed in black, marched on Australia Hall in Sydney to bring attention to the mistreatment of Aboriginal peoples by Australians of European descent since colonization. In response to the march, Prime Minister Joseph Aloysius Lyons met with Ferguson, Cooper, and Patten. Also in 1938 Ferguson and Patten wrote a pamphlet titled Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights!

Service on the Aborigines Welfare Board and departure from the Australian Labor Party

In the ensuing years Ferguson continued to agitate for Aboriginal rights. In 1940 the Aborigines Protection Board was reconstituted as the Aborigines Welfare Board. Three years later the government agreed to allow Aboriginal individuals to serve on the board, to which Ferguson was elected. However, during his tenure (1944–49) he saw only minor reforms to Aboriginal policies. In 1949 Ferguson became vice president of the Australian Aborigines’ League and authored a set of requested administrative reforms that were submitted to the Labor government of Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley. When Chifley’s minister for the interior proved to be disinterested, an enraged Ferguson left the Labor Party and ran unsuccessfully as an independent for a parliamentary seat in December 1949. He died shortly thereafter in January 1950.