In the first week of April 1968, two things happened. First, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. That event spurred another in a small town in Iowa called Riceville. 28 third-grade students walked into the classroom of Jane Elliott and everything shifted when one said, "they shot that King yesterday. Why'd they shoot that King?" For those who know Jane Elliott, they know her because of the events in her classroom the day after the murder of Dr. King. She decided to do an experiment that shifted the trajectory of her life entirely.
Per the words of Adrienne Shropshire, “there are many ways to get to the north star…” and we will be looking at one of the ways the path is laid out. For this session of L&L, we are going to explore the world and methods of Jane Elliott. We are not here to critique or argue with her methodology but to look at what she does, why she does it that way, and what lessons we can learn from and then use to move the conversations on race forward. This session includes our traditional articles but you can’t get the full Jane Elliott experience without seeing her in action so we have videos as a part of our resources.
As always, you do not have to get through everything to attend. Just do your best and we will go from there.
Register in advance for this session: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEtdeqtqDwoHtGykOqSMC-eBJFYhJYi_IVK
Who is Jane Elliott?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/style/jane-elliott-anti-racism.html
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi3iqJykwEo (If you can only watch one, this one is recommended. ~ 5 mins)
https://www.facebook.com/redtabletalk/videos/the-racial-divide-women-of-color-white-women/343064719835818/ (one of her most current interviews where the topic is the racial divide between which women and Black women. ~ 25 mins)
Additional videos for those who are interested (optional for this session):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mcCLm_LwpE&t=29s (full original PBS Frontline interview. ~ 55 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0-vRRFhNDA (full version of college students going through experiment. ~ 40 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebPoSMULI5U (Jane Elliott experimenting on Oprah’s audience. ~ 30 mins)