Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on the evening of April 4, 1968. That night Jane Elliott, a third-grade teacher in the farm town of Riceville, watched the news. Everyone in Riceville was white, and so was every child in her class. One moment on the screen stayed with her. A white reporter asked a Black man who was going to control his people. Elliott felt the question treated a whole community as less than human. Her class had honored King earlier that year, but she could see that admiring him from a safe distance had taught them little. She decided the children needed to feel, not just hear, what it was like to be judged for something they could not change. What was she going to do to them in the morning?
The Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Classroom
In 1968 Jane Elliott split her 28 third-graders by eye colour the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.
Chapter 1
The Morning After
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Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes exercise?
It was a classroom lesson run by third-grade teacher Jane Elliott on April 5, 1968. She told her class that brown-eyed children were superior to blue-eyed children and treated them that way. The next Monday she reversed the roles so every child felt both sides.
What did Jane Elliott observe in her students during the exercise?
Within 15 minutes the friendly class turned cruel, and the children labelled inferior became timid and slower at tasks. On a card exercise the superior group finished in 2.5 minutes while the inferior group took 5.5. When the roles reversed, the newly superior children worked faster but were less vicious.
What happened to Jane Elliott after the experiment became public?
She was invited onto The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and received hundreds of angry calls and letters. In Riceville, other teachers walked out of the lounge when she entered, and her son was beaten up at school. Her parents' restaurant was eventually forced out of business by a boycott.
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