Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane NAACP, announced that the chapter's regular Monday meeting would include an explanation regarding accusations she masqueraded as black, however she's now said the meeting is postponed.
"Due to the need to continue discussion with regional and national NAACP leaders, tomorrow’s meeting is postponed and will be rescheduled for a later date. We appreciate your patience and understanding at this time," Dolezal wrote to chapter members on Sunday,
according to The Spokesman-Review.
Roughly an hour later, however, board member Lawrence Burnley emailed Dolezal and NAACP members to say that the president doesn't have the authority to postpone the meeing.
"I’m puzzled by your decision to arbitrarily cancel/postpone the meeting without input from the executive committee which is scheduled to meet today. The Association’s by-laws provides specific guidelines concerning monthly general/branch meetings," he wrote.
"Article V, Section 1 states, 'Regular meetings shall be held on a fix day or date each month.' That date, as agreed upon by the executive committee, is the third Monday of each month which is tomorrow. I don’t see any language in the by-laws that empowers you, or any one member, to arbitrarily cancel/postpone tomorrow’s meeting."
Finally, another member said the meeting will go on as scheduled, but it remains unclear whether that's true, and whether Dolezal will attend if it is.
The national office of the NAACP gave Dolezal some backing on Friday after her parents revealed that she has no black ancestry, but has repeatedly portrayed herself as having such.
"One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership," said Michelle Nealy, a spokeswoman based in Baltimore, Maryland. "NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her privacy in this matter."
Freda Gandy, executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center in Spokane, told The Spokesman-Review that, "Ethically I don’t really know how they can say she can be an effective leader when she has lied to an entire community."
"The NAACP, in my opinion, feels like she only needs to answer to them. She forfeited that right when she became a community leader. That means she answers to all of us, me and you."