At a campaign event on Tuesday, Atlanta rapper and Bernie Sanders-surrogate Killer Mike referenced something anti-racism activist and feminist Jane Elliot had told him: “A uterus doesn’t qualify you to be president of the United States.” In an email to Gawker, Elliot did not dispute the accuracy of the quote.

“Gender should not be one of the issues cited to determine leadership capabilities,” Elliot, best known for developing the so-called blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, wrote, “but Mrs. Clinton has made many references to the fact that she will be the first woman elected to the presidency.”

Earlier this month, Clinton defended her own surrogate Madeleine Albright’s (oft-repeated) sentiment that “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Here, incidentally, is what Killer Mike said on Tuesday:

When people tell us, hold on, wait a while, and that’s what the other Democrat is telling you. Hold on Black Lives Matter, just wait a while. Hold on young people in this country, just wait a while. And then she get good, she have your own momma come to you, your momma sit down and say, “Well, you’re a woman.” But I talked to Jane Elliott a few weeks ago and Jane said, “Michael, a uterus doesn’t qualify you to be president of the United States. You have to be, you have to have policy that’s reflective of social justice.” Paying women a fair wage is social justice. Making sure that minorities have jobs is social justice.

“If President Obama had insisted that he should be elected because of the color of his skin, all Hell would have broken loose, and rightly so,” Elliot told Gawker. “Of course, everyone knows that he was not our first black president; Abraham Lincoln was, and he seemed to set a fairly high standard, wouldn’t you agree?”

It’s not actually clear that everyone does know that: Such claims about Lincoln’s heritage—while certainly compelling, and somewhat pervasive—have never been conclusively proven. Elliot did not immediately respond to an inquiry about her source for the claim.

Update – 7:24 pm

Of where she learned that Lincoln was our first black president, Elliot wrote:

I read that information in a piece of material that I picked up at an African-American book fair several years ago. Of course, over the years, I’ve lost track of the book which contained that information, but checking it shouldn’t be too difficult, what with all the technology which is available for that purpose, today.


Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.