27 years ago when civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated grief and frustration erupted in America's cities Far away in Iowa, one third grade teacher knew she had to do something. The shooting of Martin Luther King could not just be talked about and explained away. There was no way to explain this to little third graders in Riceville, Iowa. I knew that it was time to deal with this in a concrete...
not just talk about it, because we had talked about racism since the first day of school. This is a fact. Blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people. It was a daring experiment in prejudice. I watched wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third graders.
Can one teacher in one day change the lives of her students forever? Tonight, a class divided. August 1984. A high school reunion brings some 50 former students to Riceville, Iowa.
Eleven of them, some with their spouses and children, arrive early for a special reunion with their former third grade children. teacher, Jane Elliott. Oh, gee!
I'm so delighted. And this is my husband. This is my husband, Tom. Tom, Brian.
I don't have one. How are you? Oh, you're so kind.
I'm just... Roy Wilson. I made it. You darling. Oh, Roy.
Been a long time. Been here. I'm so glad to see you. That's great.
I didn't care about either of you. How are you doing? Fine. A lot of times I've seen you.
Yeah, he's been... Where are your little ones? They're at home with Mom. It's coming down.
And this is your husband. Yeah, that's Greg. Greg Rollins.
Greg Rollins. I'm nice to him. Fourteen years earlier, when they were students in her 30s...
third grade classroom, ABC News filmed a two-day exercise for a documentary, The Eye of the Storm. Now, at their request, they will see that film again and relive the experience of her unique lesson in discrimination. Be home.
This is a special week. Does anybody know what it is? National Brotherhood.
National Brotherhood Week. What's brotherhood? Be kind to your brothers.
Be kind to your brothers. Like you would like to be treated. Treat everyone the way you would like to be treated. Treat everyone as though he was your brother.
And is there anyone in this United States that we do not treat as our brothers? Yes. Who?
The black people. The black people. Who else?
Absolutely the Indians. And when you see, when many people see a black person or a yellow person or a red person, what do they think? Oh, look at that stupid, look at that.
Dumb people. And look at the dumb people. What else do they think sometimes?
What kinds of things do they say about black people? Oh, call them Negroes, niggers. In the city, many places in the United States, how are black people treated? How are Indians treated? treated how are people who are of a different color than we are treated.
They are part of this world. They don't get anything of this world. Why is that?
Because they're a different color. You think you know how it would feel to be judged by the color of your skin? Yeah.
Do you think you do? No, I don't think you would know how that felt unless you had been through it, would you? It might be interesting to judge people today by the color of their eyes. Carl's. Would you like to try this?
Yeah! Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Since I'm the teacher and I have blue eyes, I think maybe the blue-eyed people should be on top the first day.
You mean up here? I mean the blue-eyed people are the better people in this room. Oh, hello.
Oh, yes, they are. Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. Oh, hello.
I got stupid. Is your dad brown-eyed? Yeah. One day you came to school and you told us that he kicked you. He did.
Do you think a blue-eyed father would kick his son? My dad's blue-eyed. He's never kicked me. Greg's dad is blue-eyed.
He's never kicked him. Rex is dead as blue-eyed. He's never kicked him.
This is a fact. Blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people. Are you brown-eyed or blue-eyed? Why are you shaking your head? Are you sure that you're right?
Why? What makes you so sure that you're right? The blue-eyed people get five extra minutes of recess while the brown-eyed people have to stay in.
The brown-eyed people do not get to use the drinking fountain. You'll have to use the paper cups. You brown-eyed people are not to play with the blue-eyed people on the playground because you are not as good as blue-eyed people.
The brown-eyed people in this room today are going to wear... colors so that we can tell from a distance what color your eyes are. On page 127?
You'll begin to notice today that we spend a great deal of time waiting for brown-eyed people. The yardstick's gone. Well, okay. I don't see the yardstick. Do you?
It's probably over there. Hey, Mrs. L, you better keep that on your desk so the brown-eyed people get out of hand. Oh, you think if the brown-eyed people get out of hand, that would be the thing to use? Who goes first to lunch?
The blue-eyed people. No brown-eyed people go back for seconds. Blue-eyed people may go back for seconds.
Brown-eyed people do not. Don't you know? They're not smart. Is that the only reason? It might take too much.
Okay, quietly. And it seemed like when we were down on the bottom, everything bad was happening to us. The way they treated you, you felt like you didn't even want it.
try to do anything. Seemed like Mrs. Elliot was taking our best friend's away from us. What happened at recess? Were two of you boys fighting? Yeah.
Russell and John. What happened, John? Russell called me names and I hit him. Hit him in the gut.
Brown eyes. You call him brown eyes? They always call us that.
Yeah. He had to get all the boys called that. Yeah, all the boys. He kept calling us brown eyes. They said, come here, brown eyes.
He was a brown-eyed boy. brown eyes. Then they would call us blue eyes. I wasn't.
Sandy and Donna were. Yeah. What's wrong with being called brown eyes?
It means that we're stupid. No, not that. Oh, that's just the same way as other people call black people niggers.
Yeah. Is that the reason you hit him, John? Did it help?
Did it stop him? Did it make you feel better inside? It stopped for us, so...
Did it make you feel better inside? Did it make you feel better to call him brown-eyed? Why do you suppose you call him brown-eyed? Probably because he has brown eyes. Is that the only reason he didn't call him brown eyes yesterday and he had brown eyes yesterday?
Didn't he? Because we decided that. Yeah, ever since you put those blue things on there. I'm going to tease him.
I'm going to tease him. Oh, is this teasing? No. Well, he did it.
Were you doing it for fun, to be funny, or were you doing it to be mean? I don't know, don't ask me. Did anyone laugh at you when you did it?
I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious. discriminating little third graders in a space of 15 minutes. Yesterday I told you that brown-eyed people aren't as good as blue-eyed people. That wasn't true.
I lied to you yesterday. Oh boy. The truth is that brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. Russell, where are your glasses?
I forgot them. You forgot them and what color are your eyes? Susan Ginder has brown eyes.
She didn't forget her glasses Russell ring has blue eyes and what about his glasses? He forgot them. He forgot them.
Yesterday we were visiting and Greg said, Boy, I like to hit my little sister as hard as I can. That's fun. What does that tell you about blue-eyed people? They're naughty.
They fight a lot. The brown-eyed people may take off their collars, and each of you may put your collar on a blue-eyed person. The brown-eyed people get five extra minutes of recess.
You blue-eyed people are not allowed to be on the playground equipment at any time. You blue-eyed people are not to play with the brown-eyed people. Brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people.
They are smarter than blue-eyed people. And if you don't believe it, look at Brian. Do blue-eyed people know how to sit in a chair?
Very sad. Very, very sad. Who can tell me what contraction should be in the first sentence?
Go to the board and write it, John. Come on, let's do it again. Loosen up.
Up, up, up. Come on. That's better.
Now, do you know how to make a W? Okay, write the contraction for we are. Now that's beautiful writing! Is that better? Yes!
Brown-eyed people learn fast, don't they? Yeah! Boy, do the brown-eyed people learn fast! Very good!
Greg, what did you do with that cup? Will you please go and get that cup and put your name on it and keep it at your desk. Blue-eyed people are wasteful. Okay, you want to be timed this morning? Yeah!
Abe! I use Orton-Gillingham phonics, we use the card pack. And the children, the brown-eyed children, were in the low class the first day. And it took them five and a half minutes to get through the card pack.
The second day, it took them two and a half minutes. The only thing that had changed was the fact that now they were superior people. I thought you were going to give me more.
You went faster than I've ever had anyone go through the card pack. Hey, what? couldn't you get them yesterday? We had those collars on. You think the collars kept you?
You just keep thinking about those collars. Oh, and you couldn't think as well with the collars on. Four minutes and 18 seconds. I know we weren't gonna make it.
How long did it take you yesterday? Three minutes. Three minutes.
How long did it take you today? day? Four minutes and eighteen seconds.
What happened? Went down. Why?
What were you thinking of? This. I hate today. How do you do? I hate too.
Because I'm blue-eyed. See, I am too. It's nothing, it's not funny, it's not fun, it's not pleasant. This is a filthy, nasty word called discrimination.
We're treating people a certain way because they are different from the rest of us. Is that fair? No. Nothing fair about it.
We didn't say this was going to be a fair day, did we? No. And it isn't.
It's a horrid day. You ready? What did you blue... people who are wearing blue collars now find out today?
I know what they felt like yesterday. I did too. How did they feel yesterday?
Like a dog on a leash. Yeah. It feels like a cheater wherever you go.
In a prison. your channel now up into prison like you're shut up and you're throwing the key away should the color of some other person's eyes have anything to do with how you treat them no all right then should the color of their skin no should you judge people no by the color No. Of their skin?
No. No. You're going to say that today, and this week, and probably all the time you're in this room.
I will. You'll say, no, Mrs. Elliott. No.
Every time I ask that question. No, Mrs. Elliott. Then, when you see...
A black man, or an Indian, or someone walking down the street, are you going to say, Ha ha, look at that silly looking thing. No, not me. Does it make any difference whether their skin is black or white?
No. Or yellow? No.
Or red? No. Is that how you decide whether people are good or bad?
No. Is that what makes people good or bad? No.
Let's take these collars off. What would you like to do with them? Throw them away.
Go ahead. Go ahead. Now you know a little bit more than you knew at the beginning of this week?
Yeah. A lot. Do you know a little bit more than you wanted to? Yes, Mrs. Wiesel.
This isn't an easy way to learn this, is it? No, Mrs. Wiesel. Oh, well, you stop that. Okay, now, let's all sit down here together.
Blue eyes and brown eyes. Does it make any difference what color you are? No. Down, girl. Oh, you found your friend.
Okay, you ready to listen now? Okay, now are you back? Yes! Does that feel better?
Yes! Does the color of the eyes that you have make any difference in the kind of person you are? No! Does that feel like being home again, girls?
Yes! Oh, well! This was the third time Jane Elliott had taught her lesson in discrimination.
The first, two years earlier, was in April of 1968. On the day after Martin Luther King was killed by... One of my students came into the room and said, they shot a king last night, Mrs. Elliott. Why'd they shoot that king? I knew the night before that it was time to deal with this in a concrete way, not just talk about it, because we had talked about racism since the first day of school.
But the shooting of Martin Luther King, who had been one of our heroes of the month in February, could not just be talked about and explained away. There was no way to explain this to little third graders in Riceville, Iowa. As I listened to the white male commentators on TV the night before, I was hearing things like, who's going to hold your people together as they interviewed black leaders? What are they going to do? Who's going to control your people as though this was these people?
were subhuman and someone was going to have to step in there and control them. They said things like, when we lost our leader, his widow helped to hold us together. Who's going to hold them together? And the attitude was so arrogant and so condescending and so ungodly that I thought if white male adults react this way, what are my third graders going to do?
How are they going to react to this thing? I was ironing the teepee. We studied an Indian unit.
We made a teepee every year. The first year, the students... would make the teepee out of pieces of sheet we'd sew it together and the next year we'd decorate it with indian symbols i was ironing the previous year's teepee getting it ready to be decorated the next day and i thought of what we had done with the indians we haven't made much progress in these 200 300 years and i thought this is the time now to teach them really what the sioux indian prayer that says oh great spirit keep me from ever judging a man until i have walked in his moccasins really means and for the next day day I knew that my children were going to walk in someone else's moccasins for a day.
Like at our lump-it, they were going to have to walk in someone else's moccasins. I decided at that point that it was time to try the eye color thing, which I had thought about many, many times but had never used. So the next day I introduced an eye color exercise in my classroom and split the class according to eye color and immediately created a microcosm of society in a third grade classroom. Riceville hasn't changed much in the 70s.
17 years since then. It's still a small farming community surrounded by cornfields. Its population is still under a thousand. And it's still all white and all Christian.
And though Jane Elliott has continued to teach her lesson in discrimination, there's been little outward local reaction. No objections from school authorities or the parents of the 300-odd students who have by now been through it. There's one kid I could really agree with. was at recess.
He was a brown-eyed kid. He had this inner turmoil against this feeling of being divided or prejudiced against where he would hit another kid that he's known for so many years in the gut. Whether he also stated that it didn't help any.
So that automatically should be a lesson to every adult in the world. Violence doesn't help any. And, you know, this is a film that I hope that my children get to see.