Posted on 07/17/2004 12:02:01 PM PDT by Destro
Strom Thurmond Continued: The Known World of Ms. Washington-Williams
By BRENT STAPLES
Published: July 17, 2004
If newspapers reach the afterlife, then Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina is having a fitful time in that great Senate chamber in the sky. Mr. Thurmond, who died last year at the age of 100, spent half of the 20th century fending off the rumor that he had fathered a child of Carrie Butler, a black maid who worked in his family's home during the 1920's. He had been dead less than a year when Ms. Butler's daughter, a retired teacher named Essie Mae Washington-Williams, came forward to claim him as her father, explaining that he had met secretly with her for decades while denying her existence in public.
As a young woman, Ms. Washington-Williams calculated that having a fraction of a father glimpsed in back rooms was preferable to having no father at all. But since his death, she has laid claim to the Thurmond legacy in a very public way, not least of all by having her name inscribed alongside the names of the senator's other children on the Thurmond memorial outside the South Carolina Statehouse. Along the way, she has consciously transformed her family's story into a penetrating lesson on the history of race in the early South.
White patriarchs who trafficked in racism by day and sired black children at night are an archetype in the history of the South, where white and black families have always been more closely related by blood than many whites cared to admit. The final public outing of Mr. Thurmond was viewed with amusement in black communities across the country.
But amusement turned to perplexity recently when Ms. Washington-Williams announced that she would embrace her white heritage by applying for membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a historically white group founded in the 19th century to memorialize Southern valor in the war to preserve slavery.
Ms. Washington-Williams said through her lawyer that she was not condoning slavery but was exploring her heritage in a way that she hoped would produce a richer dialogue about race. As a former teacher, she clearly recognizes the instructional value of her family's story. By showing that families who appear to be white at one time can appear to be black at another, she is underscoring the fact that race is a more elastic concept than most contemporary Americans understand.
She also wants to show that black Americans played roles in all aspects of the nation's history, including the Civil War. That war featured African-American participants on both sides, as did the slave trade, where blacks served not just as slaves but also as owners.
The fact that African-Americans, some of them former slaves, actually owned human beings has only recently begun to penetrate the public consciousness. Many people learned about it for the first time by reading a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel by Edward Jones, "The Known World," which explores the life of a black slaveholder in Virginia.
Charleston, S.C., had more slaves in the 19th century than any other city. And it was an epicenter of free people of color who were slave owners.
The city was also a center for mixed-race people, thanks to generations of encounters between Charleston's white elite and the legions of slaves who were needed to sustain the opulent Charlestonian lifestyle. (The historian Joel Williamson wrote that the city was "half white and half Negro, and its Negro half was more white than black.") Charleston's wealthy free people of color were often eager slave owners, and many of them shared with whites a derisive attitude toward the darker black masses.
Eager to protect their money and privilege, and the slaves upon which both rested, many free people of color in the Deep South rallied to the Confederate cause at the start of the war. They fought as rebels right up to the time when it became apparent that the South would lose.
The hatred they felt for former slaves was palpable to Union officers who pressed into the South during the war. As one officer wrote to the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison: "With all their admirable qualities, [they] have not yet forgotten that they were, themselves, slaveholders."
This reality of a socially complex, mixed-race South — with whites and blacks closely related by blood and mutually complicit in slavery — disappeared from public view as the country adopted simplistic formulations of the racial past.
The drama unfolding between the daughter of a black woman born in the shadow of slavery and a white family with deep Confederate roots seems the perfect window through which to revisit the subject. If that is what Ms. Washington-Williams intended, she has served a useful purpose for us all.
"There are at the present moment many Colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down any loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the rebels." - Frederick Douglass
The only time the Times runs anything "controversial" (to wit, not embracing the liberal party line 100%) is on Saturday, the day with their smallest circulation.
the war was ONLY to win LIBERTY for dixie, from the arrogant,conniving,self-serving,hateFILLED, secularist, self-righteous,ignorant damnyankees.
the war, today, continues by other means than arms.
otoh, the editors of the NY SLIMES are NOT STUPID, but rather something worse. they are LIARS & persons WITHOUT HONOR. that, too,has not changed in a century and a half.
free the southland NOW,sw
he paid for her education,bought her first car,sent her spending money & presents throughout her childhood/young womanhood, visited her on Parent's Day at college (all 4 years!) & at other times, found her her first teaching job & bought her a starter home.
imVho. a LOT of dads could do/have done worse by their LEGITIMATE daughters!
also, the so-called "maid" mentioned in the article was ACTUALLY a "childhood CHUM" that grew up to be a "stunner"! (i've seen pictures of her as a young woman.)
one, therefore, has reason to ponder the following: is the reporter IGNORANT or is he a LIAR????
free dixie,sw
Would you tell me where I can view the pictures of Carrie Butler please?
free dixie,sw
NOTE to our/my northern readers:
Being northernborn no more condemns one to be a DAMNYANKEE than it forces you to be a PLUMBER. Damnyankee is a LEARNED rather than inborn PREJUDICE against everything (our southern persons,our institutions, our mores,our WBTS memorials, our sacred battleflags, our CSA burial places, etc.,etc.etc.) in/of the southland. "Damnyankeeism" is the FUNCTIONAL equivalent of & NO BETTER than RACISM; it is the blinding/UNreasoning HATRED of an entire region. FACT!
free dixie,sw
free dixie NOW,sw
free dixie NOW,sw
free dixie,sw
The relationships between the races in the South were and are more complex than the mainstream media and current history books would lead one to believe.
Or people want to admit - even on this thread more attention is paid to attacking the article's position as to why the South went into rebellion rather than the main thrust of the article.
Just an observation. I have also observed the South is the most patriotic part of the nation - yet they are patriotic to the nation their ancestors fought to leave. Paradoxical.
Only in the NYT... they wrote a similar hit piece about South Africa. Why are liberals so obsessed with race? Esp. racial situations THAT ARE IN THE PAST. I dont read the Slimes for good reason. The paper SUCKS.
it has forever been true that the damnyankee northeastern elites believe that what THEY WANT is good for ALL. of course, they never ask the rest of us what WE WANT!
free dixie,sw
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