Who is Rachel Dolezal? Controversial teacher loses job over OnlyFans account

A controversial teacher was terminated from her job after explicit images from her OnlyFans account were discovered on social media.

Rachel Dolezal has been teaching at an elementary school in Arizona since August 2023, according to a report from News4 Tucson.

Dolezal, a white woman who identified as black for years, changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016.

She was after images from her adult content account, linked to her Instagram, went viral on Reddit. The district director of alumni and community relations, Julie Farbarik, said the images were “contrary to our districts use of social media by District Employees and policy and our staff’s ethics policy”.

Farbarik said in a statement to Arizona Daily Star: “We only learned of Ms Nkechi Diallo’s OnlyFans social media posts yesterday afternoon. She is no longer employed by the Catalina Foothills school district.”

Who is Rachel Dolezal?

New name: Rachel Dolezal (AP)

Rachel Dolezal is a former college instructor and activist from Montana, America. She gained notoriety for her controversial decision to identify herself as a Black woman in 2014.

Dolezal worked as the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Spokane, Washington between 2014-15.  She was forced out of her position after she was outed as a “race-faker” when a local news reporter asked her if she was African-American.

The disgraced educator, who kept up her fake appearance using fake tan and box braid styles on her hair, later revealed she was not a Black woman but claimed to be “trans-Black”.

She told the Washington Post that she was “biologically born to white parents but I identify as Black”.

At the time, Dolezal’s parents told the New York Times: “She’s clearly our birth daughter, and we’re clearly Caucasian — that’s just a fact,” her father Lawrence told the outlet at the time. “She is a very talented woman, doing work she believes in. Why can’t she do that as a Caucasian woman, which is what she is?”

In the aftermath of the controversy, Dolezal was dismissed from her position as a teacher in African studies at Eastern Washington University. She was also removed from her role as chair of the Office of the Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane.

In 2017, she authored a memoir titled In Full Colour: Finding My Place in a Black and White World, exploring “the discrimination she’s suffered while living as a black woman”.

She was featured in a Netflix documentary in 2018, which drew heavy criticism from viewers, who said the streaming company should not be giving a platform to a white woman passing as black.

Register now for one of the Evening Standard’s newsletters. From a daily news briefing to Homes & Property insights, plus lifestyle, going out, offers and more. For the best stories in your inbox, click here.