(l-r) Elizabeth Mitchell, Jane Elliot, Gladys DeVane, and Danielle Bruce. Courtesy photo

by Sophie Bird Murphy

The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, a schoolteacher named Jane Elliott in Riceville, Iowa, performed an exercise with her third grade students that would soon gain national attention for its approach to teaching antidiscrimination.

Now known as the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise, Elliott’s lesson divided students into two groups: those with brown eyes and those without. When Elliott told her students that brown-eyed people were more intelligent than people with blue, green, or hazel eyes, she watched as brown-eyed students became more confident, successful, and domineering. Blue-eyed students did the opposite.

The following day, Elliott told her students she had lied. Blue-eyed people were superior instead. Although the students’ roles were now reversed, Elliott observed far less discrimination against the “less intelligent” students than the day before. Her students had learned to walk in someone else’s shoes.

“Her greatest victory, in her mind, was that [her students] absolutely said they never wanted to feel that way again, and they didn’t want other people to feel that way, either,” says Danielle Bruce, who recently directed a play about Elliott’s exercise for Resilience Productions, a local theater company dedicated to sharing the untold stories of African Americans.

The play, A Contrast in Color: Jane Elliott’s Lasting Impression, was performed October 2–5 at the Monroe County History Center. Presented in interview format, the show featured a panel of fictional exercise participants who answered questions about Elliott’s methodology—and its long-term results.

Today, the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise is considered the basis for modern diversity training. At the time, however, it had its fair share of critics.

“Jane Elliott is quite controversial,” says playwright Gladys DeVane. “People either love her, adore her and hold her in high esteem, or they are extremely critical.”

In preparation for the play, DeVane, Bruce, and researcher Elizabeth Mitchell traveled to Riceville to visit Elliott in person. 

Mitchell, who played the role of on-stage interviewer for the panel, says she appreciated Elliott’s perspective on racism. “I grew up under segregation,” she says. “It was like she was speaking for me and to try to get people to understand how that felt.” 

Visit monroehistory.org/resilience-productions.