Charles Perkins, who led the Freedom Ride in New South Wales 50 years ago this week, was a powerful and often uncompromising personality who became the first Aboriginal person to not only complete tertiary education, but to head a Federal Government department.

But his determination to work with the system, not just criticise it from the outside, led veteran journalist Gerald Stone, who covered the first Australian Freedom Ride in 1965, to remember him as "powerful because he was moderate".

Sydney University student Perkins organised the 1965 Australian Freedom Ride, modelled on the Freedom Rides against segregation in America's deep south.

The bus trip was designed to show how much discrimination Aboriginal people in Australian country towns were still encountering.

Stone told the ABC's PM program that Perkins and his fellow riders on the bus trip were very open, allowing people to question their motives and actions along the way.

"You could be very resentful about what was happening," said Stone.

"It would have been so easy [for Perkins] to have become radicalised and make provocative statements, but he wanted to try and win the mainstream of Australian people."

One way of doing that was via media coverage.

Stone, who at the time had recently arrived from America, was working for Sydney afternoon tabloid Daily Mirror at the time.

One of the biggest stories he broke was about segregation at a local swimming pool in the town of Moree.

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Freedom Ride organiser Charles Perkins 'powerful because he was moderate', says veteran journalist