The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Its goal was to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown.

Elliot told her students that children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown eyes. As a result, they were denied access to play equipment. Children with blue eyes were told they were stupid, and they were not allowed to socialize with members of the 'superior group'. The next day the roles were reversed, with the blue-eyed children were told that they were actually the superior in every way to students with brown eyes.

The idea behind the experiment was to show the children first hand what prejudice was like. The experiment was a success. On days when students were part of the so-called inferior group, they had lower test scores, showed less enthusiasm, and displayed more hostility towards activities in the classroom. This particular experiment has since been repeated with similar, dramatic results elsewhere. The design of the experiment has raised serious ethical questions surrounding the idea of "informed consent." Critics suggest that Jane Elliott was not qualified to perform this type of experiment and that she did not consider the long-term consequences of this study on her students. The design of the experiment was such that her young students' questioned their own value in society.

The implication about human behavior relating to this particular experiment involves the idea that being racist is a choice that people make. Individuals can choose to be racists, or they can choose to reject the idea that racism is an innate and unchangeable aspect of human behavior (Lesson of a lifetime: her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided towns...

And what a privilege that is."

This resonated with me, especially because what prompted me to start these conversations with teachers. I was getting overwhelmed with what I saw in the news and social media and decided to "take a break" from it... prompting me to think about the people who can't take a break from it because they live with it daily. 

“In 1866, one year after the 13 Amendment was ratified (the amendment that ended slavery), Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor (peonage). This made the business of arresting Blacks very lucrative, which is why hundreds of White men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility was to search out and arrest Blacks who were in violation of Black Codes. Once arrested, these men, women and children would be leased to plantations where they would harvest cotton, tobacco, sugar cane. Or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor.

It is believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Blacks were part of the system of peonage, or re-enslavement through the prison system. Peonage didn’t end until after World War II began, around 1940.

This is how it happened.

The 13th Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Ratified in 1865)

Did you catch that? It says, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime.” Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. This system of convict labor is called peonage.

The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish laws called Black Codes. 

Here are some examples of Black Codes:
In Louisiana, it was illegal for a Black man to preach to Black congregations without special permission in writing from the president of the police. If caught, he could be arrested and fined. If he could not pay the fines, which were unbelievably high, he would be forced to work for an individual, or go to jail or prison where he would work until his debt was paid off. If a Black person did not have a job, he or she could be arrested and imprisoned on the charge of vagrancy or loitering. 

This next Black Code will make you cringe. In South Carolina, if the parent of a Black child was considered vagrant, the judicial system allowed the police and/or other government agencies to “apprentice” the child to an "employer". Males could be held until the age of 21, and females could be held until they were 18. Their owner had the legal right to inflict punishment on the child for disobedience, and to recapture them if they ran away. 

This (peonage) is an example of systemic racism - Racism established and perpetuated by government systems. Slavery was made legal by the U.S. Government. Segregation, Black Codes, Jim Crow and peonage were all made legal by the government, and upheld by the judicial system. These acts of racism were built into the system, which is where the term “Systemic Racism” is derived.

This is the part of "Black History" that most of us were unaware of.