(L-R) Judd Ehrlich and Killer Mike attend the “Jane Elliott Against the World” premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Yarrow Theatre on January 27, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
By Gina McIntyre
Jane Elliott doesn’t care about fame or legacy. As she herself states in footage that concludes director Judd Ehrlich’s documentary Jane Elliott Against the World: “What people say about me is of little importance to me. Did I make a difference today? Did I make a difference today? Did I make a positive difference today in the area of racism? That’s what I want to do.”
The tireless Elliott is the inspiring subject of the new film, and at its January 27 Sundance Film Festival premiere at The Yarrow Theatre, Ehrlich confirms that Jane “does not want your admiration, she wants your courage.” Courage, and the commitment to follow her own convictions, is something that Elliott has displayed for the last four decades as she has crusaded against racism in America.
Raised in the rural community of Riceville, Iowa, Jane’s mission began back when she was an elementary educator in the 1960s. Outraged and stunned by the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Elliott resolved to do something to root out the entrenched racist attitudes in the country. So, she devised her now-famous “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, which she carried out as a kind of social experiment in her third-grade classroom.
Separating students from one another based solely on the color of their eyes, she cast one group as inferior; they were treated unfairly over the full course of the school day. Their peers refused to play with them and began to call them names, to taunt them. The next morning, she revealed that it was the first group who actually had the inferior eye color and were less deserving of kindness and consideration. The same behaviors followed. By the end of the second day, the students, all of them white and deeply upset by what had taken place, had viscerally experienced what it was like to be discriminated against on the basis of an attribute over which they had no control.
The exercise ignited an uproar in the local community, and the furor around Elliott only continued to grow as her message began to spread with the release of the 1970 television documentary The Eye of the Storm, which showed her putting the exercise into practice. Subsequent television appearances and news articles elevated her profile further, creating hardship for her children and conflict with her neighbors. Still, nothing would stop her from doing everything in her power to dismantle racism. Now in her 90s, she’s just as committed to advancing equality.
Ehrlich, whose 2021 documentary, The Price of Freedom, explored the influence of the National Rifle Association on American gun culture, first saw Elliott on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1992. But it wasn’t until 2020, when racial tensions were reaching a boiling point in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, that he reached out to her about possibly making a film.
“She gets back to people personally, so she got right back to me over email,” Ehrlich says at The Yarrow Theatre. “I jumped on Zoom with her, and she started correcting me. She started putting me in my place. She started telling me where I was wrong, and I said, ‘Jane, I think we have a film here.’” Developing a rapport with Elliott did take time, he says, but she eventually found a level of comfort with Ehrlich that allowed him to make a film that promoted her message and offered insights into what motivates her to continue her work. “Like any project, you earn people’s trust just by spending time without the camera rolling,” Ehrlich says. “I’m so grateful to Jane, to her family for trusting us with this story.”
Joining Ehrlich onstage are people Jane has worked beside and taught who are featured in the film. Retired principal Rex Kozak was in her third-grade class. “Jane gave me the courage to speak up to make the playing field level for all kids,” Kozak says. “Hopefully over my 30-some years of being a teacher, coach, principal, I’ve made that difference for students of all types.” Adds Dianne Cox, a longtime Temecula, California, teacher who found an ally in Jane after she was targeted by the conservative local school board: “Jane for me was able to say the things that I wish I could say, but being in this skin, I couldn’t get away with it the way she did.”
Just before the conclusion of the Q&A, Elliott herself appears on screen to rousing applause — and true to no-nonsense form, she admonishes the audience: “We only have a few minutes, so stop that applause and let’s get to it.”
Before the event concludes, she’s explaining how the very idea of “black” and “white” skin color is an artificial construct dating back hundreds of years and that all of us, in fact, are just varying shades of brown. “We have been using words since the 1500s to separate people,” Elliott says. “We have been ruled by these words long enough.”
“Jane is doing exactly what Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture said that white people should be doing: Educating white people on racism,” notes activist and rapper Killer Mike, who appears in the documentary and proudly stands onstage beside Ehrlich, Kozak, and Cox. “Man, it feels damn good to have an ally, a co-conspirator, and a sister in that fight, which is how I see Jane, as truly a sister, a teacher, an instructor. I appreciate her for allowing me to be a part of the bigger family.”
