Nkechi Amare Diallo signed the paperwork at a Spokane courthouse in October 2016. That is her legal name now. Before that, she was called Rachel Dolezal, and before that, she was simply the white woman who for years led everyone to believe she was African American.
Her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, appeared on television to clarify the obvious: they are both white, and she was also born white. Rachel was exposed in 2015 and lost her position as president of the NAACP in Spokane when the truth came out. She studied at Howard, a historically Black university, and grew up alongside African American adopted siblings, but none of that changes what her own parents said on camera.
After the scandal, she couldn’t get a job anywhere respectable. She had to rely on food stamps to survive, and the only job offers she received were for reality television or pornography. With or without a new name, she keeps repeating the same thing: she identifies as Black. Nothing that happened afterward made her change her mind.