Winner of Salem Human Rights Award Talks About Her Struggle Against Racism

The Salem News (April 13, 2004)

By Alan Burke, Staff Writer

SALEM – Teacher Jane Elliott made headlines in 1968 with a remarkable exercise, dividing the blue-eyed and brown-eyed children in her all-white third-grade class and allowing one group to discriminate against the other, letting them feel what racism is.

Yesterday at the Hawthorne Hotel, after some provocative remarks, Elliott accepted the 12th annual Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice as a tribute to her groundbreaking idea. The award, a glass bowl, is given to people who act in the spirit of those who spoke out and halted the injustices of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.

"I appreciate it," Elliott said. "I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. Now, do you want your bowl back?"

If Elliott seemed to anticipate criticism along with her award, it might be because what she did 35 years ago in Riceville, Iowa, earned her both abuse and acclaim. It was days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and Elliott's idea attracted attention locally and nationally.

She was invited to appear on the top-rated Johnny Carson show, for example. But she was also denounced by neighbors as a "n-lover," her father's business failed and her mother became permanently estranged. For those reasons, yesterday Elliott repeatedly expressed regret over what she'd done in class.

"If I had known that my husband was going to lose all his friends…I would never have done that exercise."

In fact, she went on doing it, year after year. She even tried it at a local Rotary, where one man was so offended by the brief experience that he still avoids Elliott decades later.

By 1984, she left the classroom and began doing the exercise with businesses, government agencies and other institutions hoping to instruct workers on the ills of discrimination. Disney plans a movie of the incident with Susan Sarandon portraying Elliott.

She has her work cut out for her. An uninhibited speaker, Elliott minced no words in blaming discrimination on an American culture that educates people to be bigoted, a culture that "we have spread" across the world.

"You've got to be carefully taught (to hate)," she said, quoting a song from the musical "South Pacific." "I'm a racist by my parents, my school and my religion."

At various times, Elliott spoke out against factors which she believes contribute to discrimination, including standardized tests—"Any farmer will tell you that you can't increase the size of a pig by weighing it"; against schools—"Schools are perpetuating racism, sexism, ageism and homophobia"; against President Bush—"He can't even say nuclear"; and in favor of affirmative action—"There is no reverse discrimination. There is only delayed justice."

Her plain spoken manner had the large audience at the Hawthorne Hotel laughing with her most of the time.

Noting that she's often received death threats, she joked, "I know that some of you here right now would like to kill me. Don't do that. Don't kill me in Salem." More seriously, she added, "The elimination of racism is this country is worth dying for."

Reprinted with permission from The Salem News.