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Strom Thurmond's Black family - Exclusive: senator's daughter reveals story behind the story
Ebony, March, 2004 by Nikita Foston
For 62 years, she lived a life of secrecy, enslave by lies, rumors and shame.
Then, at age 78, she ripped open the veil of secrecy, telling a press conference audience in the capital of south Carolina:
"My name is Essie Mae Washington-Williams and James Strom Thurmond was my father."
The crowd applauded when she added: "At last, I am completely free."
Freed at last from the embarrassment and shame of the years, the retired Los Angeles teacher completed a 50-year vow to EBONY magazine, revealing the story behind the story to an EBONY team that assembled, for the first lime, the children and grandchildren of the Black Thurmond family. Recalling the day, 50 years ago, when EBONY tried to interview her after Governor Thurmond visited her at South Carolina State College, she said: "When you came to talk to me then, I wouldn't say anything. It took all this time for you to get to me, but now, I'm ready."
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Interviewed first in Los Angeles and then in Seattle, she entered a plush restaurant in the Grand Hyatt Seattle with her head held high, her cane in one hand, the hand of her lawyer, Frank K. Wheaton, in the other. Throughout the interview, she was reserved, articulate and focused on telling the untold story.
The story she told was an old one, the story of a powerful Southern White man who crossed the color line to father an African-American child. It was a story not only of Thurmond, but also of Thomas Jefferson and many other White men in the South (and North) who used their power and position for sexual advantage.
The story begins with 16-year-old Carrie Buffer, a maid in the Thurmond home in Edgefield, South Carolina, who gave birth to Essie Mae Washington on October 12, 1925.
Although the age of consent in South Carolina in 1922 was 16, some experts say that it is inappropriate to discuss consent by a Black child, confronted by the power of a White man, in a White home, in the old South. Professor Valinda Littlefield of the University of South Carolina says that Carrie Butler had no real choice. "We're talking age, we're talking economic situation, social position and racial position. What does she say? She really doesn't have any say in this situation."
Overwhelmed by the situation, Carrie Butler put her child into the hands of relatives, two of whom, John and Mary Washington, later adopted and raised her in Coatesville, Pa.
Williams didn't know who, or where, her father was until 1941, when at age 16, she was invited to a private office in Edgefield. There, Thurmond, a rising appellate judge, greeted her and told her that she looked just like his sister. "He told me," she recalls, "that he was glad to see me. Then he started asking what I planned to do when I got out of school. He wanted to know if I planned to go to college and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life." Thurmond, Williams says, recommended South Carolina State. "I thought that was a good idea," she says, "because I wanted to go away from home and I already had a lot of relatives there." During an hour-long conversation, Williams recalls, they discussed education, exercise and her striking resemblance to his sister.
The next day, Thurmond sent his sister--he obviously wanted her to see the resemblance--to Williams' aunt's home with a cash gift. That first payment--she can't disclose the amounts under advice of counsel--would not be provided again until Thurmond returned from World War II in 1945, when Williams was a student at South Carolina State.
Upon his return, Thurmond continued to send money periodically, including cash to cover the cost of Williams' books, tuition, room and board, until she married second-year law student Julius Williams. Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform, stopped the payments that year, saying he believed in family values. "Once I got married in 1948," Williams said, "my father respected my husband as the sole provider. But when he died, he began the payments again."
Was this hush money? No, Williams says, pointedly denying comments from people who've suggested that Thurmond's support was an effort to maintain her silence. "It was clearly," she says, "from his heart."
In the '50s, '60s and '70s, through the rise and fall of the Freedom Movement and the demonstrations and Ku Klux Klan attacks in South Carolina and the South, their unlikely bond remained consistent, including trips to the governor's mansion and gifts from Thurmond. "Wherever he was," she says, "whether he was making a speech or an appearance, if it was near me, he would make sure that we saw each other ... He was good to me and my children."
In these years, Williams completed her education--a bachelor's degree at California State and a master's at University of Southern California--before embarking upon a 27-year teaching career. She and her husband, Julius Williams, whom she married as a junior in college, moved from South Carolina to California and had four children, prior to his death in 1964.
