Jane Elliott's Blue Eye Brown Eye Experiment

Jane Elliott

Jane Elliott is an educator and social activist from the United States. She conducted the “Blue eyes-Brown eyes” exercise the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to teach her students about discrimination and racism. Jane Elliott filmed her third trial of the experiment, turning it into a movie titled The Eye of the Storm. She still conducts the blue eye brown eye experiment around the U.S. and lectures about its effects around the world.

==Biography of Jane Elliott==

Jane Elliott was born on May 27, 1933, in Riceville, Iowa, on the Elliott family farm. She was the fourth of five offspring to an Irish-American father and her mother. They did not have electricity or running water on the farm until 1943 and she attended school in the city’s one-room schoolhouse. Elliot received a Bachelors from the University of Iowa.Bloom, 2005

==The Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.==

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., occurred on April 4, 1968. That evening Jane Elliott watched the news and the white reporter questioned a local African-American community leader saying, “When our leader was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who’s going to control your people?” referring to the assassination of

They were published under the title “How Discrimination Feels” on April 18, 1968, and the Associated Press picked it up. Johnny Carson hosted her on The Tonight Show, where she described the exercise and received wholly negative responses from the public. They condemned her as being cruel to white children and stated she would cause psychological damage. She countered this by saying, “Why are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?”Bloom,