Biography jane elliott

American anti-racism educator

For other people named Jane Elliott, see Jane Elliott (disambiguation).

Jane Elliott (néeJennison;^[2][3] born November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator.

As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class^[a] on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local newspaper led to much broader media interest in it.

The classroom exercise was filmed in 1970, becoming the documentary The Eye of the Storm.

PBS series Frontline featured a reunion of the 1970 class, as well as Elliott's work with adults, in its 1985 episode "A Class Divided". Invitations to speak and to conduct her exercise eventually led Elliott to give up school teaching and to become a full-time public speaker against discrimin