Rachel Dolezal, activist who identified as black, changes name Nkechi Diallo

A white woman who passed herself off as black has changed her name to the Nigerian term for "gift of God".

Rachel Dolezal was forced to resign as leader of Washington's National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NCAAP) branch in 2015 after she her parents revealed she was white.

The controversy saw the African Studies professor being accused of "blackface" and using black people's history of oppression for her own ends.

Ms Dolezal has argued that, although she is "Caucaisan biologically", she identifies as a black woman and decided to ditch her white identity following a divorce.

The elaborate subtefuge saw her claiming a black man she once met in Idaho was her father while changing her hair to make it look African American.

According to court papers obtained by MailOnline, she has now officially changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo.

The paper reported that Nkechi is short for Nkechinyere, a word orginating from Nigeria's Igbo language translating as "what god has given" or "gift of god".

In a recent interview with The Guardian, the 39-year-old claimed she cannot find a job and was near homelessness after the controversy.

She told the paper she had been turned down for more than 100 different positions and had only been offered work in reality TV and porn.

The mother-of-two said: "'I’m sure it’s hard to make sense of for people from the outside, but for me it’s been like a consistent, organic process of coming into who I am. 

"As long as I can remember, I saw myself as black. I was socially conditioned to discard that."

She went on: "There's no protected class for me. I'm this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on.

"And I'm a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It's like I am the worst of all these worlds."

She is planning on publishing a memoir next month entitled In Full Color: Finding My Place In A Black And White World.