The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s inspired Jane Elliott to become a civil rights activist. She chose to face the problem of discrimination by addressing it in her third grade classroom. She started a project with her students called Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes, and it started with dividing the students based on their eye color.

On the first day, Elliott told her students that the brown-eyed students were cleaner, smarter, and better than the blue-eyed students, and she treated them better. On the second day, Elliott said that the blue-eyed students were cleaner, smarter, and better than the brown-eyed students, so they were treated better. Afterwards, the class got together and discussed what had happened. All students agreed that it was not very fun being mistreated. However on the first day, when the brown-eyed students were being treated better, they were teasing the blue-eyed students who were being mistreated. But, when the blue-eyed students were the special ones, instead of being mean, they were nicer to the brown-eyed students, since they knew how it felt to not be treated nicely. This project showed how it actually feels to be discriminated against something you are not in control of. 

One of the heroic traits Jane Elliott has is compassion. She chose to try to help bring more awareness to the racism and discrimination of Black people. I admire how she decided to teach this to her students, so that she can make them understand discrimination. For my art work, I chose to make an eye with a picture of Jane Elliott in the middle. The eye is divided into blue and brown colors, to symbolize her project. In the background, there are lots of newspapers covering Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, which is what fueled Elliott to take action. By doing this project, I learned that you have to show empathy to others in need. If someone needs help, it is your job as a human being to help them in any way.