Seeking Racial Justice

When Jack and Jean Horner joined the crowd at a public meeting in Sydney Town Hall in Australia in April 1957, they went simply to find out whether Aboriginal people were discriminated against. The meeting launched a historic campaign for Aboriginal rights that culminated in the 1967 referendum to establish Aboriginal citizenship. For the Horners, it began a lifelong association with the movement for Aboriginal advancement. Part history, part memoir, Seeking Racial Justice is Jack Horner's account of the campaign for Indigenous rights, and his own role as a 'well meaning whitefella'. His story is a fusion of first-hand experience, personal insight, and meticulous detail drawn from his extensive personal archive. He offers an insiders view of the movement's major figures, among them Faith Bandler, Pearl Gibbs, Bert Groves and Gordon Bryant, and the ideological transition from the belief in assimilation, to integration, to self-determination. It tells of the growing voice of Aboriginal people within the movement, and the vexed and painful issue of the declining role of 'whitefellas'. Seeking Racial Justice is both an engaging personal history and an important link in the history of Indigenous affairs. Book review Horner’s analysis of the 40 years reveals two pivotal shifts in the story: the ascendance of black leadership in the advancement movement and the ascendance of the self-determination assumption. This unsentimental reflection on some of the motives, shortcomings, and successes FCAATSI leadership from one leader’s perspective will be of interest to specialist reading in the US and other postcolonial countries. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. —S.R Martin, Michigan Technological University