A Class Divided (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

27 years ago, when civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated,

grief and frustration erupted in America's cities.

And 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 way, 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.

11 of them, some with their spouses and children, arrive early for a special reunion with their former third grade teacher, Jane Elliott.

14 years earlier, when they were students in her 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.

This is a special week.

Does anybody know what it is?

National Brotherhood Week.

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?

Black people.

The black people.

Who else?

Indians.

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?

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?

Negroes.

Negroes.

In the city.

Many places in the United States.

How are black people treated?

How are Indians treated?

How are people who are of a different color than we are treated?

They don't get anything of this world.

Why is that?

Because they're different color.

You think you know how that would feel to be judged by the color of your skin?

Yeah.

I don't.

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.

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.

I mean the blue-eyed people are the better people in this room.

Uh-uh.

Oh, yes, they are.

Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people.

My dad isn't that 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?

Yeah.

My dad's blue-eyed.

He's never kicked me.

Brian's dad is blue-eyed.

He's never kicked him.

Rex's dad is 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?

Blue.

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.

Hmm.

The brown-eyed people do not get to use the drinking fountains.

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 collars.

So that we can tell from a distance what color your eyes are.

On page 127.

127.

Is everyone ready?

Everyone but Laurie.

Ready, Laurie?

She's a brown-eyed.

You'll begin to notice today that we spend a great deal of time waiting for brown-eyed people.

Who goes first to lunch?

The blue-eyed people.

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.

They're not smart.

Is that the only reason?

It might take too much.

Okay, quietly now.

It seems 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 to try to do anything.

It seemed like Mrs. Elliott was taking our best friends away from us.

What happened at recess?

Were two of you boys fighting?

Yes, Russell and John were.

What happened, John?

Russell called me names and I hit him in the gut.

What did he call you?

Brown-eyes.

He called you brown-eyes?

They always call us that.

They get all the blue-eyes.

They keep calling us brown-eyes.

They say, come here, brown-eyes.

Then they were calling us blue-eyes.

What's wrong with being called brown-eyes?

It means that we're stupider.

Well, not that, but that's just the same way as other people call black people Negroes.

Is that the reason you hit him, John?

Did it help?

Did it stop him?

Stopped Russell.

Did it make you feel better inside?

Did it make you feel better inside?

Did it make you feel better to call him brown-eyes?

Why do you suppose you call him brown-eyes?

Because he is brown-eyes.

Is that the only reason he didn't call him brown-eyes yesterday and he had brown-eyes yesterday?

Because we decided it.

Yeah, ever since you put those blue things on there, they tease them.

Oh, is this teasing?

No.

Were you doing it for fun?

To be funny or were you doing it to be mean?

Mean.

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.

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?

Blue.

Susan Gender 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'd 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're smarter than blue-eyed people.

And if you don't believe it, look at Brian.

On the day after Martin Luther King was killed, one of my students came into the room and said, they shot a king last night, Mrs. Elliott.

Why did 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?

Uh, 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, I knew that my children were going to walk in someone else's moccasins for a day.

Like it or 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 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.

The second year I did this exercise, I gave little spelling tests,

math tests, reading tests, two weeks before the exercise, each day of the exercise and two weeks later.

And almost without exception, the students' scores go up on the day they're on the top.

Down on the day they're on the bottom.

And then maintain a higher level for the rest of the year after they've been through the exercise.

We've sent some of those tests to Stanford University, to the psychology department.

And they did a sort of an informal review of them.

And they said that what's happening here is kids' academic ability is being changed in a 24-hour period.

And that isn't possible.

But it's happening.

Something very strange is happening to these children because suddenly they're finding out how really great they are.

And they are responding to what they know now they're able to do.

And it has happened consistently with third graders.

I think the necessity for this exercise is a crime.

No, I don't want to see it used more widely.

I want to see its the necessity for it wiped out.

And I think if educators were determined that we could be very instrumental in wiping out the necessity for this exercise.