Jane Elliott Against the World

The morning after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott walked into her all-white classroom in Riceville, Iowa, and divided her students into two groups by eye color. By treating one group as superior and the other as inferior, she created a lesson in discrimination that would become one of the most influential and controversial teaching exercises of the 20th century.

The exercise forced Jane onto the national stage. Soon afterward, the unknown teacher from rural Iowa found herself sitting across from Johnny Carson. Over the next six decades, she challenged millions of people around the world to examine how prejudice is taught, enforced, and sustained. Her direct, confrontational approach made her a nationally recognized and deeply polarizing figure in American education.

Now, as Jane enters her 90s, America is once again consumed by battles over race, history, and what students should be taught. When the school board in Temecula, California, moves to restrict how race and discrimination are discussed in the classroom, Jane stands beside students, educators, and families fighting back, convinced that the work she began in 1968 remains unfinished. As old battles return with new intensity, the film follows Jane at a moment when the convictions that have defined her for nearly 60 years are tested in ways she never expected.