BRAINTREE, Mass. — Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday that she listed herself as having Native American heritage in directories because she hoped to meet people with similar roots.

Warren, a Harvard Law professor, said she never tried to use minority status to get teaching jobs and criticized the campaign of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., for suggesting that might have been the case. “I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that might mean that I would be invited to … something that might happen with people who are like I am,” Warren said at a campaign stop in Braintree, according to the Boston Herald.

The listing did not produce any such contacts, and she later stopped using it, Warren said.

Directories from the Association of American Law Schools from 1986 to 1995 put Warren in the list of “minority law teachers” when she was teaching at the universities of Texas and Pennsylvania.

According to the directories, the list is made up of “those legal educators who stated they were members of a minority group.”

Warren, who grew up in Oklahoma, said she’s proud of her family ties to Cherokee and Delaware tribes, which she said she learned through stories from older family members. On Wednesday, she accused Brown’s campaign of using the listing to insinuate that she was not qualified.

Brown has not made such a claim; his campaign manager said the story raises questions about Warren’s credibility.