Variety Staff/Variety/
Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist in Washington state accused of lying about her race, has resigned from the NAACP chapter in Spokane, where she served as president.
Dolezal said she was stepping down after five months as NAACP leader because the “dialogue” about social justice and civil rights has “unexpectedly shifted internationally to my personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity.”
“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,” she wrote on the chapter’s Facebook page. “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.”
The NAACP’s Spokane chapter’s executive committee chairman was critical of Dolezal’s decision to postpone a public meeting they had scheduled for Monday.The news follows media backlash surrounding Dolezal after her estranged parents revealed that she was a Caucasian woman by birth who was pretending to be African American.
© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC