How good was racism in the ’70s and ’80s! A short history of bigotry in the Northern Territory

Keep Australia Clean (Kill a Coon); If Abos want land they should buy the bastard the same as the whites do. They have no rights to any land whatever. If they don’t want to work under our system – let ‘em starve; People with black legs won’t be served; and Buy some Coon cheese today for catching black mice: Noticeboard, Daly Waters Hotel, 1978.

‘Murdered by a person or persons name unknown.’ The unsolved deaths of Nabbutta Abbott Nabarula and David Charlie. Part One.

The neck is stretched out, the head thrown back, the legs straight and stiff. The fits are brought on or made worse by the slightest touch, sound or light. Finally, one dreadful seizure follows another, until they are continuous and death ensues.

‘They took our culture – now there is no law’

It was late November 2010, one of those red-hot November days that only the Western Desert can turn on. Over six hundred people travelled for days from far and wide to bury young Jampijinpa at the small town of Nyirripi, a four-and-a-half hour dusty drive west from Alice Springs on rough dirt roads.

One night in K-Town: a den of iniquity, Shakespeare’s rose, police incompetence and a cheeky trouble-maker who was “no Jack The Ripper”

It is a matter of some sadness to the Court to have been involved in a matter which has so many unsatisfactory and unsavoury actions of the police force of the Northern Territory ... It may be that the defendant can be described as a serial pest. He may be provocative and cheeky and a trouble causer. He is 19 years old. He is not Jack the Ripper.

Constable David Jennings. NT cop and Ku Klux Klansman. Part 5. “All I have is a crusade”

“We must remove white police from the aboriginal reserves – and we must tell the black man: 'Don’t you leave your reserve all you will be subject to the white man’s law'. David Jennings, November 1978

David Jennings. NT cop and Ku Klux Klansman. Part 4. The lies of Constable David Jennings.

“The black of Australia, the full blood or the tribal black, is being led to believe by the Governments, by the half-caste city dweller that has only seen pictures of settlements and by organisations like Legal Aid et cetera, that he had a rightful place in the white community. “Nothing is further than the truth. Who wants included in our society, illiterate, unclean, drunken bludgers, who cannot even sign their names on the Government checks, who is allowed to sign those checks with the cross because he’s too lazy or too ignorant to learn even to write his own name."

Constable David Jennings. NT cop and Ku Klux Klansman. Part 3. Taking PR advice from the Klan

"Territory Ku Klux Klansman, David Jennings, has been advised by his American counterparts on how to use even an unwilling press to get his message across. David Jennings resigned from the Northern Territory Police Force last week, one day before he was due to face internal hearing on charges relating to claims of Ku Klux Klan activity in the Territory."

Constable David Jennings. NT cop and Ku Klux Klansman. Part 2: From KKK “White Giant” to an “embarrassment to the force”

NT News. Klan has HQ in the NT This is part two of a series that charts the short history of the Ku Klux Klan in the Northern Territory of Australia and the involvement of NT police officer Constable David Jennings in that story. It is part of a developing set of posts and series [...]

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