On today's edition of Bring It On!, hosts Clarenece Boone and Liz Mitchell spend the hour with Jane Elliott, noted civil rights activist and racial bias educator. Jane Elliot will be in Bloomington, IN, speaking at The Monroe County History Center on October 2nd and 3rd at 6 PM, and then on October 4th and 5th at 3 PM.

Jane Elliott

Jane Elliott, 91, is an American diversity educator. As a schoolteacher, she magnified the ramifications of racism with her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" classroom exercise. She first performed the exercise with her all white, third-grade class in Riceville, IA, on April 5, 1968. It was the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The Associated Press picked up the story first by becoming aware of the published compositions that the children had written about the experience in the local newspaper. From there,  national and even international attention grew.

Jane Elliott was featured on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) ran a documentary on her in 1970, The Eye of the Storm. Thereafter,  Jane Elliott began to receive public attention, most of it negative. Her family suffered, and there were fears about her and her family's safety. To this day, some in Riceville, IA, have fixed feelings about Jane Elliott and her Blue and Brown Eyed exercise. In December 1970, Elliott attended the White House Conference on Children, where she held the exercise with adults, an audience comprised mostly of other educators,  physicians, social workers, and other professionals who worked with children.

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 discrimination. She has directed the exercise and lectured on its effects in many places throughout the world.  She has also conducted the exercise with college students, as seen in the 2001 documentary The Angry Eye. Despite criticism of her methods and the diversity training field she pioneered, Elliott continues to lead her exercise in workshops.



Credits:
Today’s hosts are Clarence Boone and Liz Mitchell.
Our show’s executive producer is Clarence Boone.
Our consultant and WFHB News Department Director is Kade Young.
Our program engineer is Chantalle LaFontant.
Our original theme music was created by Jamyl Efiom, with additional background tracks by David Baker.