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 Dolezal, 37, who served as president of the Spokane chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the
country's oldest and largest civil rights organization, said the
controversy over her race had shifted dialogue away from key social
and political issues.
"It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social
justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the presidency and pass
the baton to my vice president, Naima Quarles-Burnley," Dolezal said
in a statement on the NAACP Spokane chapter's Facebook page.
Dolezal came under intense scrutiny last week after questions
emerged about her racial background and a white couple who
identified themselves as her biological parents came forward to say
she had misrepresented herself as black.
The image that has emerged of Dolezal is of a woman who was raised
in a home with adopted black siblings, enrolled at historically
black Howard University and later sued the Washington, D.C., school
on grounds it discriminated against her because she was white.
Dolezal, who also holds a post in Spokane's city government,
identified herself as white, African-American and Native American on
her application, City Council President Ben Stuckart said.
He said the city had opened an investigation of the veracity of her
application. Stuckart said Dolezal had filed police complaints of
racial discrimination, most recently that she received hate mail.
Court records show that while a graduate student in the fine arts
program at Howard, Dolezal filed a lawsuit against the school
claiming she was discriminated against for her race, gender and
pregnancy. She lost the case, and an appeals court ordered her to
repay the university's legal costs.
Dolezal sued Howard under her married name, Rachel Moore, court
records show. Her former husband, Kevin Moore, is black, the
Washington Post reported. RACIAL IDENTITY
In announcing her resignation from the NAACP, Dolezal said she had
remained quiet through the controversy out of respect for the work
of the civil rights group. She did not directly address whether she
had misrepresented her race.
"The dialogue has unexpectedly shifted internationally to my
personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity,"
she said. "I have waited in deference while others expressed their
feelings, beliefs, confusions and even conclusions - absent the full
story."
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The NAACP said on Monday that Dolezal had resigned from the Spokane
chapter to ensure the group's work could focus on civil and human
rights.
"The NAACP is not concerned with the racial identity of our
leadership but the institutional integrity of our advocacy,"
President Cornell William Brooks said.
A Montana couple identified as Dolezal's parents said the family was
of European and Native American descent. They told CNN and Spokane
media they had lost touch with their daughter but that she had
showed an interest in diversity and black culture, especially after
the couple adopted black children.
Recently, a photo posted on the Spokane NAACP's Facebook page showed
Dolezal with a black man described as her father. When a reporter
for a Spokane broadcaster asked her last week if she was black, she
said she did not understand the question and walked away.
Until Friday, she held an adjunct teaching role in the Africana
Studies Program at Eastern Washington University.
University spokesman David Meany said Dolezal's contract with the
school expired last week and declined to comment on whether it would
be renewed.
(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and
Peter Cooney)
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