An investigation by KREM eventually led to the station interviewing the parents of Rachel Dolezal, president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Wash.
In the interview, the parents revealed that Dolezal was in fact of German and Czech descent and not biracial, as she had been claiming for years.
The parents said Dolezal was born in Troy, Montana. She had adopted black siblings and went to school in a primarily African-American community in Missouri. Later on in life, Dolezal married a black man and divorced him in 2004. It was after that divorce, her parents said, that she began to identify as partially African-American. She also began to alter her appearance to reflect her new identity.
Her parents say they have no problem with Dolezal’s campaigning for civil rights for African-Americans, but they feel she deceived people by lying about her identity.They say Dolezal has distanced herself from them recently, while Dolezal herself told KREM she doesn’t speak to her parents because of a legal issue involving her siblings.
On Friday, the NAACP released a statement regarding the revelations, saying it supports Dolezal, and that race or creed does not factor into leadership decisions. The NAACP further added it wishes to respect Dolezel’s privacy with her ongoing legal issue.
In March, Dolezal said she received hate mail in the NAACP mailbox at the Rosewood Post Office. She said it had pictures of lynchings and referenced local race-related cases. However, the claim was called into question because the envelope was found to not have a date stamp or barcode.
Officials at the post office told Spokane police that an envelope without those features would never be put into a mailbox on purpose. The envelope could have been stuck to another, but the chances of that happening are reportedly very low.
