Spokane NAACP official in storm over identity

Joe Copeland

Joe Copeland Jul 1, 2025

Feb 6, 2018

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                <h1>Spokane NAACP official in storm over identity</h1>
                <h2><p>With her name a top Twitter topic, Rachel Dolezal, the president of Spokane's NAACP chapter, is getting the kind of attention activist groups — for the wrong reasons: Her mother tells CNN that she's white but eventually began to identify as black after the family adopted four</p></h2>
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               <p>By <a href="/author/joe-copeland-crosscut-com/">Joe Copeland</a></p> 
              <p><time datetime="2025-02-04T05:00:00-08:00">Feb 6, 2018</time></p>
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            <p>With her name a top Twitter topic, Rachel Dolezal, the president of Spokane's NAACP chapter, is getting the kind of attention activist groups — for the wrong reasons: Her mother <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-rachel-dolezal-identity/?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">tells CNN</a> that she's white but eventually began to identify as black after the family adopted four black children. <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jun/12/naacp-presidents-claims-about-background-disputed/?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">The Spokesman Review explores </a>the issue and other questions about her credibility. One of her adoptive brothers tells the Spokane paper she asked him not to "blow my cover" a few years ago.</p>
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With her name a top Twitter topic, Rachel Dolezal, the president of Spokane's NAACP chapter, is getting the kind of attention activist groups — for the wrong reasons: Her mother tells CNN that she's white but eventually began to identify as black after the family adopted four black children. The Spokesman Review explores the issue and other questions about her credibility. One of her adoptive brothers tells the Spokane paper she asked him not to "blow my cover" a few years ago.

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By Joe Copeland

Joe Copeland is the former senior editor&nbsp;for Crosscut, where he has been an editor since 2010. Before that, he was an editorial writer and columnist for the Seattle P-I and editorial page edi