Jack Patten
Aboriginal Australian activist (1905-1957)
John Thomas Patten (27 March 1905 – 12 October 1957) was an Aboriginal Australian civil rights activist and journalist. He was a co-founder of the Aborigines Progressive Association and led some of the first organised Aboriginal protests, including the Day of Mourning in 1938 and the Cummeragunja walk-off of 1939. He was also the founding editor of the short-lived Australian Abo Call, the first newspaper specifically for Aboriginal Australians.
Early life
Patten was born on 26 March 1905 in Moama, New South Wales. He was the son of Christina Mary (née Middleton) and John James Patten.
Patten was raised on the Cummeragunja Reserve, an Aboriginal reserve in New South Wales. He was educated at public schools in Tumbarumba and West Wyalong, and attended high school at West Wyalong. Following high school, Patten was unsuccessful in joining the Navy and worked for the Sydney Municipal Council. To make ends meet he occasionally worked as a boxer. While boxing at Casino in 1931, Patten married Selina Avery.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1677150. VIAF identifies the subject as 93146709. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1957, 1938 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jack Patten” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.