COLUMBUS (WCMH) — Jane Elliott, the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. march here in Columbus, discussed a controversial experiment she did while teaching a class of third graders.

Elliott told the crowd after the march that she viewed Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero and a symbol hope, so after his death, she wanted to teacher her students about the cost of racism.

“I decided that the next morning I was going to arrange to have some of my thirds graders walk for a few hours in the moccasins of a child of color in this community,” said Elliott.

She decided she was going to treat her third graders different based a physical trait they couldn’t control; treating them positively or negatively based on the color of their eyes.

“When I told them that blue eyed people aren’t as smart as  brown eyed people, they aren’t as clean as brown eyed people, they aren’t as civilized as brown eyed people, little Debbie sitting in the front row looked up at me and said ‘How come you are the teacher here if you’ve got those blue eyes?’  [That quickly] I knew that those kids know exactly how to be racists. They know exactly how to treat someone who is different from them – you pick out a difference and we can make it work.”

The experiment made her famous, but angered many in her mostly white community. Even Elliott’s own children were mistreated because of her experiment which was eventually a subject of a documentary. But 50 years later, she still teaches and she still fights racism.

“No student of any age will ever leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged. I may not be able to change your attitude but I will challenge your attitude. You have to prove to me that white people are superior to people of color and you can’t do it because it isn’t true,” finished Elliott.