In a meeting of the Massachusetts Bar Association Bench-Bar Press committee that Dianne Wilkerson attended before taking office as Democratic state senator, Wilkerson blasted the American media and education system, saying that they are conspiring to keep important cultural achievements of minorities under wraps. Her example: the heretofore ignored fact that the mother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower was black.

"She had darker skin than I do," Wilkerson, who is black, was quoted by the Massachusetts Lawyer's Weekly as telling the group. She also said that she should have been tipped off by Ike's short hair and "yellowish skin," but she became convinced after seeing a 1968 edition of either Time or Life, which she claims was recalled from the newsstands, that showed Eisenhower's mother clearly was black. Officials at Time and Life aren't aware of any such occasion.

Archivist Dwight Strandberg from the Eisenhower presidential library in Abelene, Kansas, says that Wilkerson has her facts wrong. "As far as the records show, Ida Eisenhower was of Germanic descent, with a little Swiss thrown in." Strandberg also pointed out the source of the rumor: a group of segregationists attempting to inflict political damage on Eisenhower during the 1957 Little Rock school desegregation case.

Even in the face of the library's evidence, Wilkerson insists that her view is correct. "You don't think there is any such thing as black Germans?" she asked.

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