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CORVALLIS - Jane Elliott, a former elementary school teacher who gained national attention for her classroom experiments on racism in the 1960s, will give a free public lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at Oregon State University.

Her talk, "The Anatomy of Prejudice," begins at 7 p.m. in LaSells Stewart Center.

Elliott created her "Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes" experiment in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to teach her students about discrimination. In her experiment, she divided her grade school pupils by eye color, telling the brown-eyed group that it was superior and granting its members more privileges than the "inferior" blue-eyed group. The following day, the roles were reversed.

The third-grade classroom changed dramatically, Elliott said, affecting not only individual behavior but also learning capabilities.

She repeated those experiments for several years - meeting with both praise and sharp criticism - and then retired from teaching to become a corporate diversity trainer. Elliott speaks frequently on college campuses, and to businesses, civic organizations and elementary and secondary schools about diversity.

Her work has been the subject of several television documentaries, including ABC's "The Eye of the Storm," which garnered a Peabody Award. The PBS Frontline series showcased Elliott on "A Class Divided," and Florida Public Television did likewise with "The Eye of the Beholder," both of which won Emmy Awards.

Elliott's OSU appearance is sponsored by Partnerships for Diversity, which consists of several groups, including Hewlett-Packard, CH2M HILL, OSU and the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Linn-Benton Community College, the City of Corvallis, Benton County, the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, the Community Alliance for Diversity, the Corvallis Odd Fellows, Safeway, the Corvallis Gazette-Times and the Albany Democrat-Herald.