Pearl Mary "Gambanyi" Gibbs was an Indigenous Australian activist, and the most prominent female activist within the Aboriginal movement in the early 20th century.
20 Facts About Pearl Gibbs
1.
2.
Pearl Gibbs was a member of the Aborigines Progressive Association, and was involved with various protest events such as the 1938 Day of Mourning.
3.
Pearl Gibbs has strong associations with activists Jessie Street and Faith Bandler.
4.
Gibbs was born Pearl Mary Brown on 18 July 1901 in La Perouse or possibly Botany Bay, Sydney, to Mary Margaret Brown, whose mother was an Aboriginal woman of the Ngemba people called Maria, and a white man, David Barry.
5.
Pearl 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.
6.
Pearl Gibbs married Robert James Gibbs, in April 1923, 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.
7.
Pearl Gibbs spent time living at Salt Pan Creek camp in south-western Sydney.
8.
Pearl Gibbs was one of the first members of the APA, and attracted large crowds when she gave speeches in the Domain in Sydney.
9.
Pearl Gibbs 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.
10.
Pearl Gibbs 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.
11.
In 1941, Pearl Gibbs made the first radio broadcast by an Aboriginal woman, on the station 2WL in Wollongong.
12.
Pearl Gibbs's speech was on Aboriginal civil rights, and carefully scripted so that it would be allowed on the air.
13.
The file included records of which political meetings Pearl Gibbs had attended, and clippings of newspaper articles in which she had been mentioned.
14.
Later, in 1960, Pearl Gibbs set up a hostel to care for the families of Aboriginal hospital patients in Dubbo.
15.
From 1954 to 1957, Pearl Gibbs was the only Aboriginal member of the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board, and she was the only woman to ever serve on the board.
16.
Pearl Gibbs was able to use the AAF to develop connections with the trade union movement in New South Wales.
17.
Pearl Gibbs continued to be politically active throughout the 1970s, including supporting the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
18.
Pearl Gibbs forged important links between the Aboriginal movement and other progressive political groups, notably the women's movement.
19.
Pearl Gibbs was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.
20.
In November 2023, it was announced that Pearl Gibbs was one of eight women chosen to be commemorated in the second round of blue plaques sponsored by the Government of New South Wales alongside, among others, Kathleen Butler, godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge; Emma Jane Callaghan, an Aboriginal midwife and activist; Susan Katherina Schardt; journalist Dorothy Drain; writer Charmian Clift; and charity worker Grace Emily Munro.