Rachel Dolezal Will Break Her Silence on Tuesday
The woman who has been accused of falsely portraying her racial identity will break her silence on Tuesday. NBC News announced on Monday evening that Rachel Dolezal would speak out Tuesday morning in a number of interviews, including a live segment on the TODAY show. The network said in a statement that Dolezal would also have sit-downs with NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and NBCBLK, its African-American-focused web vertical. The interviews will come after Dolezal's Monday resignation as president of the Spokane, Wash. chapter of the NAACP, following a controversy that exploded last week over how she has portrayed her race in recent years. Dolezal has in the past identified herself as partly African-American, yet her parents have publicly said they are both of European origin. "It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the Presidency," she said in her statement. "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.", Earlier on Monday, court documents emerged showing Dolezal had once sued Howard University on the basis of discrimination. She filed a lawsuit after her graduation in 2002, alleging that the historically black university had discriminated against her during her time as an MFA student there, per the documents obtained by The Smoking Gun. MORE Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Let Rachel Dolezal Be as Black as She Wants to Be, In a statement to TIME, a Howard University representative said the school "considers this matter closed and has no further comment.", Dolezal, now 37, claimed she had been discriminated on the basis of "race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender, as well as retaliation." She said this resulted in the university denying her scholarship aid and a teaching assistantship while she was a student, and an instructorship after she graduated. Dolezal, who at the time was known as Rachel Moore, claimed that the removal of her artwork from a student exhibition in 2001 "was motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students" over her. On the matter of the instructorship, Judge Zoe Bush wrote that Dolezal "did not apply for any advertised faculty position rather, she dropped off her resume and a cover letter with the Art Department following her graduation. The cover letter acknowledged her understanding that no teaching positions were then available  Contrary to Moore's argument, the fact that a part-time instructor was later hired to teach printmaking  a subject not included in Moore's professed area of focus'  is not significantly probative evidence of discrimination.", The complaint was argued and decided in the D.C. Court of Appeals in 2005, with Bush denying Dolezal's claim, writing she did not provide proof that she had been discriminated against on the basis of race or any other forbidden factor.