SPOKANE, Wash. — Rachel Dolezal resigned as president of the NAACP’s Spokane chapter Monday just days after her parents said she is a white woman posing as black — a dizzyingly swift fall for an activist credited with injecting remarkable new energy into the civil rights organization.
The furor touched off fierce debate around the country over racial identity and divided the NAACP itself.
“In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP,” Dolezal, who was elected the chapter’s president last fall, wrote on the group’s Facebook page. “Please know I will never stop fighting for human rights.”
Dolezal, a 37-year-old woman with a light brown complexion and dark curly hair, graduated from historically black Howard University, teaches African studies at a local university and was married to a black man. For years, she publicly described herself as black and complained repeatedly of being the victim of racial hatred in the heavily white region.
The uproar that led to her resignation began last week after Dolezal’s parents told the news media their daughter is white with a trace of Native American heritage. They produced photos of her as girl with fair skin and straight blond hair.