Pearl Mary Gibbs
Activist
Prominent female activist also known for her work in relation to the Indigenous Australian population. In the 1930's, she became a member and eventual leader of the Aborigines Progressive Association social movement. She organized the impactful Day of Mourning Congress protest, and she is the only women in Australian history to have served on the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board.
She began her professional career in politics around the year of 1930 while she was still in her twenties.
Although she passed away in 1983, she was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.
She is a native of Botany Bay, New South Wales. Her mother was an Aboriginal woman born of Ngemba descent, and her father was a white man. In April 1923, she married an English sailor named Robert James Gibbs. Together, they had three children.
She shares a July 18 birthday with Nelson Mandela and Priyanka Chopra.