Here's What Rachel Dolezal Said About Passing Two Months Ago

Nicholas K. Geranios / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Earlier this year, the small city of Spokane, in eastern Washington State, was shaken by controversy after the relatives of one of its more prominent citizens called his ethnicity into question.

Daniel K. Oliver was the the first black member of the town’s legislature, elected in 1895. But when he was inducted into the town hall of fame in 2015, his great- grandnephew and great-granddaughter – the family's genealogist – told the Spokesman-Review that their forefather was actually white.

The paper asked local NAACP President Rachel Dolezal to comment. Here’s what she had to say:

Dolezal said she was familiar with Oliver’s name from references in books that researched the African-American community’s roots in Spokane. She’s seen a picture of bearded Oliver, who admittedly doesn’t look African-American, but that doesn’t really prove anything, she added.

“Visible identity is just one factor,” Dolezal said. Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, the year Oliver took his council seat, was similarly light-skinned, she noted. Plessy was considered “colored” even though seven of his eight great-grandparents were white.

People of mixed race in that era often tried to pass as white “for purposes of survival,” Dolezal said. “Now, that might be seen as a little bit of a traitorous act. Given the time, it’s forgivable, looking back in hindsight.”

If he was trying to “pass,” Oliver might not have been a visible leader of the African-American community. But he wasn’t trying to pass, his family counters. He simply wasn’t African-American and “some researchers won’t listen,” [great- grandnephew] Steve Oliver said.

Dolezal, who consistently represented herself as either black or bi-racial in her newspaper columns, interviews to news outlets, and even her own painting, now finds herself in an eerily similar situation to Oliver's.

Her biological parents said Thursday they are white — as is she.

LINK: NAACP Stands By Rachel Dolezal

LINK: A Civil Rights Leader Has Disguised Herself As Black For Years, Her Parents Say

LINK: Here Are Rachel Dolezal’s Responses So Far Concerning Her Race And Hate Mail

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