A binder clip, less commonly often called a banker’s clip or foldover clip or ‘’bobby clip”, is a straightforward machine for binding sheets of paper together. In 1998, three middle-school lecturers in Whitwell, Tenn. (pop. 1,500) came up with a venture for the eighth grade class: Study intolerance by learning the Holocaust. The students learn The Diary of Anne Frank and did internet research, discovering that during World Conflict II, the Norwegians wore paper clips of their lapels as a silent gesture of solidarity and sympathy with Hitler’s victims.

David Smith, one of the academics involved, says he knows he’s stereotyped as a Southerner, and admits that he stereotypes Northerners. In changing their perceptions about minorities, the students of Whitwell additionally changed perceptions others may have held about them. That America has been divided by pundits into blue states and red states does not mean there aren’t good-hearted folks residing in every single place; in a time of divisiveness, there’s something innocently naive about the fun paper clips clip undertaking, which transforms a silly mountain of paper clips into a small town’s touching gesture.