Jane Elliott

www.janeelliott.com (www.janeelliott.com)

My hero is Jane Elliott. She was born in Riceville, Iowa, on May 27, 1933, and is currently 82 years old. She is a former school teacher, and currently an anti-racism activist. She is most known for her "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" exercise she conducted with her third grade students. She has helped society in many ways.

Jane Elliott is a former school teacher, and the first time she conducted the famous "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" exercise was the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. She conducted the exercise because that day, many of her students kept on asking why he (Martin Luther King) was killed. She tried to explain it, but they weren't really understanding the concept. So, to try to get them to understand, she conducted the exercise so they knew what it felt like for him, before he died.

The day after she performed this exercise on her students, she got many angry complaints from the parents and other Riceville residents. They were complaining, saying that non-colored children shouldn't be treated so poorly, and that it would lower their self-esteem. Elliott kept on trying to explain to the others that it is not ok for anyone at all to be treated so poorly, and was only trying to get the students to understand what it was like for others. She later went on the Tonight Show. After she got back to her house, she received more criticism from people around the country. She still kept a positive attitude about it and later, people realized that she was only trying to help the children understand what it was like, and why they shouldn't treat others that way.

Jane lives in Riceville, Iowa, the same place she has lived all her life. She is no longer a school teacher, but she still is an anti-racism activist, and goes around the country performing this exercise on adults. Jane Elliott was born in 1933, and is still living.

Jane Elliott is important to me because she taught/teaches others that racism is not right and is not needed. We are all people, no matter what you look like. Even though I have never been treated poorly by other people, there are others out there who have, and that should've never happened to them. So even if she hasn't made everyone behave kindly towards others, she has helped many people.