Rachel Dolezal, whose life was turned upside down after her parents revealed she was faking her racial identity, has reportedly changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo.
Dolezal, who born to white parents in Idaho but had portrayed herself as black as an adult, legally changed her name in October, according to Washington state court documents, reported the Daily Mail.
Dolezal was president of the Spokane, Washington NAACP and worked as a part-time professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University when her parents, Larry and Ruthanne, went public in 2015 and said she was faking being black in 2015. That led to her losing her position with the NAACP and her teaching job.
Nkechi is short for Nkechinyere, a name that originates from the Igbo language of Nigeria and means "what god has given" or "gift of god." Diallo, meaning 'bold,' is a last name of Fula origin, a Muslim ethnic group thought to have roots in the Middle East and North Africa, noted the Daily Mail.
The name Nkechi Diallo shows up as starting a Change.org petition four months ago to get TED, the popular nonprofit organization that posts influential talks, to post Dolezal's TEDx speech at the University of Idaho last year.
The Change.org petition did not reveal that Diallo was possibly Dolezal herself and 46 others signed on. TED organizers wrote a blog post in November to explain its decision in posting Dolezal's speech, even though there was pushback against doing so.
"This particular talk has sparked much internal debate," TED staff post read in November. "… There's no easy middle ground here. So, in a doubtless flawed attempt to do the right thing by all of our constituencies, we have decided to make the talk available to you here, while highlighting the context in which the talk was created and the deeply felt concerns it has raised."
Dolezal, 39, turned heads in an interview in The Guardian last Saturday, in which she said she still did not consider herself white and has not been able to find a job since the controversy broke in 2015.
"I feel like the idea of being trans-black would be much more accurate than 'I'm white,'" Dolezal said in describing herself. "Because you know, I'm not white. There is a black side and a white side on all kinds of issues, whether it's political, social, (and) cultural."
"There's a perspective, there's a mentality, there’s a culture. To say that I'm black is to say, this is how I see the world, this is the philosophy, the history, this is what I love and what I honor. Calling myself black feels more accurate than saying I'm white."