NAACP leader who called herself black sued university for discriminating against her as white

Rachel Dolezal. (AFP Photo/Youn Kwak)

Rachel Dolezal. (AFP Photo/Youn Kwak)

Court documents show that Rachel Dolezal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had previously sued Howard University for racial discrimination against her as a white woman.

The problem? It was revealed last week that Dolezal has long been
identifying herself as a black woman, most recently as head of a
NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington – a position from which she
resigned on Monday.

READ MORE: #AskRachel: Civil rights activist
masquerading as black sparks ‘trans-ethnicity’ debate

The court documents, uncovered by The Smoking Gun, show that
Rachel Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named Howard
University and the then-head of the art department in a lawsuit
filed in Washington, DC superior court in 2002, alleging
discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family
responsibilities and gender
.”

Dolezal/Moore had graduated from Howard University with a Master
of Fine Arts in 2002. In the complaint, she contended that Howard
was “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule,
and insult.”

Specially, she said Professor Alfred Smith, as chair of the
University’s Department of Art, blocked her appointment to a
teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a
post-graduate instructorship and denied her scholarship aid while
she was a student. Dolezal also claimed the university had
removed some of her work from a February 2001 student exhibition
motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor
African-American student over”
herself.

The complaint was dismissed 18 months later in February 2004.
Judge Zoe Bush found no evidence that Howard University had
discriminated against Dolezal on the basis of race or other
factors, and the appeals courts affirmed the court’s decision.
Dolezal was ordered to pay the university fees of more than
$2,700 and almost an additional $1,000 for court delays.

On Monday, Dolezal resigned from her position as president of the
NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington. The resignation was issued
in the form of a statement published to the Spokane
NAACP 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,”
Dolezal wrote.

Earlier reports said that Dolezal was expected to meet with NAACP
members to address the controversy over her identity. Although
she chose to identify herself as a black woman, her true identity
was revealed when local Spokane news reporters, following up on
an allegation that the local NAACP chapter and president had
received hate mail, looked into what they thought were
inconsistencies and spoke to her parents. They discovered that
both of them were white.

In her resignation statement, Dolezal also added, “Please
know I will never stop fighting for human rights and will do
everything in my power to help and assist, whether it means
stepping up or stepping down, because this is not about me. It’s
about justice.”

“This is not me quitting; this is a continuum,” she
continued. “It’s about moving the cause of human rights and
the Black Liberation Movement along the continuum from Resistance
to Chattel Slavery to Abolition to Defiance of Jim Crow to the
building of Black Wall Street to the Civil Rights and Black Power
Movement to the ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ movement and into a future
of self-determination and empowerment.”

Source Article from http://rt.com/usa/267415-naacp-dolezal-lawsuit-howard-discrimination/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes